News

Better late than never for snow on the trails. In-season maintenance of the snowshoe trails began this week at Swampy. Leaving cold and gray skies in Bend, Dave Alward, Kurt Keasy, Kelly Eager, Chuck DelCamre, Gary Evans, Bill Silliman, Christie Crowe, Dennis Damici, Kurt Koegler and Bob Timmer headed counter-clockwise on the Porcupine Snowshoe trail. We found great snow and temperatures in the 20’s at the sno-park; 34 by lunchtime. Our goals for the day were to clear any blowdown, replace any missing reassurance markers and trim for marker visibility.

 We were excited to shoe the new Summit Bypass trail for the first time after its completion last fall. The extra height from the snow let us trim higher for marker visibility.

After work on  Summit Bypass, the group divided into two teams so we could check and clear all of the trail segments. Several saplings and a few blowdown were cleared.

Snowshoe trail maintenance will continue on Tuesdays; weather permitting. 

Updates on the trail conditions, whether they be problems with signage or blowdown or “all clear” are really appreciated as it lets us prioritize our work. Please use either the CONC Trail form or an email to BobTimmer@yahoo.com

Click HERE for the most recent condition reports for the snowshoe trails

Thanks to a lot of flexibility on the part of the instructor and the students, the four skate ski clinics all happened eventually.  Two were postponed  3 days, one was postponed 2 weeks, and one actually held as originally scheduled.  All the sessions had to be moved from Meissner to the MtB Nordic Center.  Everyone improved and seemed pleased with the lessons.  Photos were hard to come by, as everyone was too focused on teaching and learning, but a few images slipped out.

January 1, 2024 and there is NO SNOW in Bend!!!  The scheduled "show-and-go" ski outing was scrapped of necessity and hikes were substituted.  A few club members began the New Year with a hike on the Riley Ranch trails. It was a clear and cool winter day walking along the Deschutes river through the Ponderosa pines.  A wonderful alternative to skiing as we wait for more snow .  Another group of 14 folks headed to Otter Bench, hoping for trails that weren't muddy.  

And they got that; but as they approached the trailhead with clear views of Smith Rock, they desc-

ended into a fog bank.  No matter!  Everyone mingled and converged into small social groups to welcome the New Year; and ate lunch standing up!

CONC held the 2023 Winter Meeting on December 15th at Trinity Episcopal Church in downtown Bend.  We were expecting about 75 people, but set up 10 tables with nine chairs each.  A good thing we did, as all tables were occupied!  Eileen Woodward organized the event.  She and Anne Ness provided enchiladas baked at the church, with salads and desserts brought in by many members.

After dinner, all volunteers present were recognized; most of the people present stood up!  They included:

• Those who helped with the event

• CONC Board members

• Club operations & other behind-the-scenes work

• Overnight Trip Committee

• Ski lessons

• Hike leaders

• Ski & Snowshoe outings

• Trail Maintenance & firewood stocking

Following volunteer recognition, the Elections Committee (Warren Preston and Glen VanCise) reviewed the process of asking for all nominations and verified there were no new nominations for President, Vice President, Treasurer, and Secretary.  A vote on current members holding these positions was taken by verbal support .  The "Ayes" carried the evening so Eric Ness, Sue Sullivan, Eileen Woodward, and Jan Cigoy were reelected to their current positions.

It was a lively evening and enjoyed by all.  We look forward to our Spring meeting, held in May.

8 CONC members headed out on a terrific ski on Saturday, Dec 9, up to Big Meadow. There was lovely snow and a chance for some nice turns. We did have to re-route at the bottom of Pete's as the creek made accessing the Water Tower meadow a little tricky. But with such a great group, some off-trail route finding was all in good fun.

On December 2, Eric & Warren set up a table at the 2023 SunRiver Ski Show.  We were one of about 6 tables; mostly SunRiver ski shops.  The table consisted of our banner, the "One Map", the looping slide show Warren put together, and a few markers and saws to show what we do when maintaining trails.  We visited with 20-25 people over four hours, and find two days later to have 10 new members who we think were at the show.  A lot of interest in snowshoeing, so we were promoting Kelly and Bob's talk on January 3; including interest from the REI coordinator of their ski and snowshoe programs.  It was a low key show, but we enjoyed ourselves and feel it was worth our time.

Thank You To Volunteers Who Led Hikes This Summer

I want to recognize the volunteers who stepped up this last year to lead hikes for the club. We were able to offer a Sunday hike for most Sundays between 4/23-11/26. Our last hike was on 11/26 and we had 20 participants! We also had a few individuals lead a few weekday hikes as well earlier in the season. All together, we offered over 30 hikes for the club. That's an accomplishment we can all be proud of. Here are the individuals I would particularly like to thank:

John Fertig
Gary Jones
Eric Ness
Roz O'Donoghue
Ann Padgett
Warren Preston
Jerry Sebestyen
John Stockham
John Sweat

We will begin offering Sunday hikes again starting in the spring. If you are interested in leading hikes either for the Sunday event or at another time of the week, please let me know. The more people we have leading hikes, the more we are able to offer. If you are new to hike-leading, then I am happy to mentor you on the process. The best part is that you get to pick the hikes you lead!

Have a great winter and I look forward to seeing you on a hike next spring!

Kelly Cleman
Hiking Chair
masterhiker@gmail.com

Thanks for Ann Padgett for leading a great hike!

21 folks were anxious to get out and enjoy the cold but sunny day. We headed out to Upper Three Creek Snopark on FS Road 16 from Sisters. The 5 mile round trip hike followed the Jeff View Snowshoe trail to the shelter. There was no snow to speak of but the views were spectacular.

Thanks to John Stockham for this excellent write-up!

On Sunday November 19 approximately 30 hikers joined the "show-and-go" hike to Fryrear Canyon.  About 20 of the hikers met at Thump Coffee at 9.  The remainder met the group at the trailhead.  While the number of attendees was quite large, we split into 3 groups (led by Kelly Cleman, Eric Ness and John Stockham) and managed to not overwhelm the trail.  Normally, this area is not heavily used - so we apologize for disrupting the solitude of the few hikers we encountered.

Fryrear Canyon is located about 20 miles northwest of Bend between Tumalo and Sisters.  The route is accessed from the recently constructed Fryrear Trailhead, which has been developed by BLM for hiker and equestrian access. to this part of the Cline Buttes Recreation Area. The trailhead parking area is located off of the east side of Fryrear Road approximately 2 miles north of Highway 20.  There are no formal signed trails to the canyon - but the area is criss-crossed by numerous informal horse trails and old jeep roads.

Most of the CONC group hiked a 3 1/2 mile looped route through the canyon. A couple of adventurous hikers expanded the hike to include a second canyon to the east of Fryrear Canyon. It is easy to get disoriented in the maze of horse trails and old roads, but fortunately John and Eric scouted the area a couple of days earlier to flag the route through to the canyon.  The flags were removed after the hike.

Fryrear Canyon is an excellent example of a dry desert canyon consisting primarily of Deschutes Formation rocks that originated from the "ancestral High Cascades" 4 to 7 million years ago.  In this particular canyon, most of the rock walls are formed of andesitic basalts that feature interesting "platy" outcrops seen from the trail.  Further downstream, in Wychus Canyon and along the Deschutes River, the Deschutes Formation includes a mix of various igneous rock and  sedimentary rock of volcanic origin.  There is evidence along the route that water flowed through the canyon, most likely dating from the numerous intermittent glacial periods that impacted the Cascades .  Other highlights on the hike included a well-preserved pictograph, ample evidence of pack rat settlement, markings from various birds of prey, and an interesting pocket of ponderosa pines and Great Basin wild rye indicating the presence of water not too far below the surface.  We encountered numerous large ant hills that were fortified by industrious ants that have hauled "boulders" of ash and pumice to protect their colonies.  Much of the surface outside of the canyon consists of a mixture of Mazama ash that erupted from what is now Crater Lake approximately 7,500 years ago, volcanic ash from more local eruptions, and wind-blown deposits.  The hike involved only 200 to 300 of elevation gain.

The Fryrear Canyon area is a wonderful fall and winter hiking destination close to town, but it should be noted that portions of canyon proper are closed from February 1 to August 31 for protection of nesting birds of prey.  The protected area is well-posted.

Looks like snow is on the way! But it will be a while (hopefully not TOO long!) before we get significant snow depth.
So… where to go when there’s not a lot of snow?
If there’s at least 5 or 6” of snow at Swampy Lakes Sno-Park, the main loop trails (Ridge Loop, Swampy Loop) are generally passable as they are also summer trails, so they are cleared to the ground. Parts of the Swede Loop are separate from the summer trail so most of it should be passable but there may be ‘step overs’ on the parts away from the summer trail.
Other trails, such as the Nordeen Loop, the new Crosscut trail or the Shelter Tie trail from Ridge to the Swampy Loop are not maintained as summer trails so can have a fair amount of stepovers.
At Dutchman , nearly all the trails are winter only trails for most of their length so there needs to be about 2 feet of snow to be able to ski over logs. So the best option for skiing at Dutchman is to stay off the trails and just do a loop in the pumice flats.
Keep doing that snow dance!

This is the way we clear ‘winter only’ trails. You can expect some logs so there needs to be a fair amount of snow to cover them.

This is what skiing at the Pumice Flats at Dutchman looks like with 6” of snow.