Craig's Report - July 25, 2006

Sweat Mountain

It has been wickedly hot here recently and as a creature of the shade, I have been largely reduced to cowering inside, out of reach of that nasty burning sun. However the prospect of further enflabment and some minor cooling, down to the merely gawd awful, led to a morning (shudder) crawl up Siberia Bowl yesterday to check out the progress on the new restaurant at the top of the Timber Express.

I have heard that this is going to be about 1200 square feet with a large deck on two sides. Yes, there are going to be toilet facilities, but as there will be no running water, these will be some sort of very fancy compositing deals housed in a separate building. The restaurant itself will be immediately to the right as you get off of the Timber Chair and should have a killer view as well as the possibility of some heat and a hot drink for folks freeze dried by the Lost Boys� wind on the way up Timber Chair.

Mountain bike season is in full swing, but mid week traffic is pretty light and doesn�t justify running two chairs, so the Timber Chair only operates on weekends. This allows construction work to occur during the week and as can be seen from the pictures, foundation work is well under way.

You can also see that the big cat is back and was busy rearranging the landscape in the construction area, but it had also spent some time doing further alterations to Siberia Bowl on its way up. These consisted of clearing some area on the skiers left of the gully below the switch back and putting in a cat track across the gully about where the Rock Star mountain bike trail used to be. Needless to say, Rock Star still isn�t open this year. I am not sure if there will be an easy exit from this area or if those heading to that side of the gully in the winter will still be left with a choice between the tight trees and the ugly gully.

The only other significant hill modification that comes to mind is some logging that took place near the bottom of Diamond Back, where it crosses the cat track from the top of Deer. It appears this might just have been done to better align the top and bottom parts and make it more obvious that the run continues, rather than aiming folks towards the top of Meadow.

At 11:30 it is a still pleasant 23 C on the porch, but the sun in beating down and another hot afternoon appears to be in the making.


Foundations appear for the restaurant at the top of Timber.

Another minor improvement has been the paving of the access road from the resort center up to the Timber Tube (the skier underpass to Timberline).

Hmmm, cat tracks heading up Siberia. These things usually lead to something interesting.

Sure enough kitty took a break on the way up to scratch out a cat track across the gully below the switchback and clear some terrain on the other side of the gully. This image was taken from just above the hairpin on the switchback.

Checking out the foundation work from the Timber Chair loading platform.

And another view...

And yet another.

Timber Bowl from the viewing platform above the lift.

Lots of logs and a huge burn pile at the top of Meadow are the result of some logging on the edge of lower Diamond Back. The top of the Deer Chair is just behind the trees at the left of the photo.

What appears to be a particularly large version of the Timber Lodges is growing just below the other buildings.