Quick report
Well 2024 saved the best for last. Today was easily the best day I’ve ever had at Tumalo. A couple days ago after the big storm dump, it was actually too deep in some of the usual pseudo-bc terrain at Bachy, and I figured Tumalo bowl would be super sketch. But the new snow settled nicely yesterday, so we went to check it out. Nothing concerning on the way up and we could tell the new snow had settled to a reasonable “fun” level (we did “observe" that actually getting to the TH is the hardest part, since Dutchman is kind of a sh1tshow right now especially with the holiday crowds - though on the plus side that did also reduce the number of people up there). The bowl itself held basically perfect pow with no instabilities noted. Far riders left side did have a bunch of buried cornice chunks, but other than that it was all time. Surprisingly didn’t even see signs of wind effect for the most part, the only place that was pronounced was further down the riders left side at the second ridge drop that’s below the usual skin track. There were also several sledders high marking the sled side of the bowl and again no instabilities noted. We took pow surfers up there, and riding steep terrain on a pow surfer requires basically perfect snow (at least for me), and it was so good that we did 5 laps - if that gives any indication how good the snow was. Sadly this is all probably irrelevant now with the new snow coming in. But man, what a ridiculously good start to the season and what a way to close out 2024! Oh yeah, another thing I “observed” was 3 sledders riding directly across the entire bottom of the bowl and out the other side (right where the skin track usually is). The sledder in me would like to give them the benefit of the doubt and say maybe they weren’t locals and didn’t know the boundary… on the other hand, this was at about 4pm and at the time they crossed they could have thought nobody was around (aside from me giving them hand signals from the top). I swear I’ve seen boundary signs out there in the past, maybe that would help.