Wallpapered on the US Market windows: Bend’s best beta for touring info. Find it at NW Albany, Bend, OR.
A soggy Monday morning in this corner of the PNW warrants a moment to get the head out of the sand. With eyes wide open, sand free, and two cups of coffee down, I am thinking of gatekeeping. Which, after a few false starts Googling terms like “backcountry skiing and gatekeeping” looped me back to @jackkuenzle’s IG statement on the topic. It’s not that the algorithm linked to Kuenzle’s “content,” but I recalled Kuenzle mentioning The High Route in a post. The post I’m referring to is about gatekeeping, and Kuenzle highlights a moment in one of our early podcasts where the interviewee discusses their desire to ski untracked Wasatch snow.
Skiing/riding untracked snow, and having the desire to ski/ride untracked snow, in principle, is something I am keen on to a point. I’m certainly not willing to physically keep others from accessing a zone. However, I am willing to do a pre dawn-start if I suspect a zone may attract a crowd. (Note: I’m not especially fast. An early start can be a prerequisite for fresh tracks, and if I arrive at the trailhead at the same time as younger, faster, hungrier, and more motivated backcountry tourists, I won’t be getting fresh tracks. The upside to a later arrival is that I get a skintrack. Upsides. Focus on the upsides.)
The comments on Kuenzle’s post are informative. And if you are positioned at one extreme or the other in the gatekeep or not-gatekeep schism, you might be enlightened or enraged. It depends on how open-minded you find yourself.
As an online and print publication, we don’t have official dogma, for example, about labeling photo captions with geographically specific information that may disclose this zone from that. We try to use our judgment. Shame or celebrate us, we are trying to navigate a landscape where pretty much all but the most real-time information regarding conditions and snowpack is available.
Which is to say, I am about to jump into the fray and provide some beta on my local zone. Sorry OGs. Sorry, not sorry, publishers of new-school stapled-together atlases.
I’m in Bend, Oregon. If you are new to the area, a good place to scope the touring scene is from about 20 miles away, east of town, in the shallow end of the increasingly deep and utterly vast sagebrush sea. Ok. If you’re there, or can imagine being there, gaze west. Unfolding before you are a series of volcanoes and cones and craters mainly running north-south. I won’t dispel the names of each geographic feature. My guess is, if you’re knee-deep in this sagebrush sea, you are also neck-deep in an easily accessible mapping app with handy labels and a whole Crayola crayon box of colored layers for beta on things such as slope angle and aspect and where mountain bike trails are located, if, by chance, the snow sliding is sub par. (For reference, I use onX and, occasionally, CalTopo.)
Barry Wicks handles an ice cream treat while pointing out some ski lines.
Now that you have a handle on the somewhat far away perspective, I will drop a secret on not “one of the six best places” in Bend to scope out some potential lines, but THE BEST PLACE. (Note to reader: the operative word here is some.)
I know of this location due to a bi-monthly, post ski tour addiction to Diet Coke in a can. Yes, a can. Why? That’s a different story altogether, but I think it tastes better. Not just better, but great, compared to the same drink in a plastic bottle.
On a recent post-tour Diet Coke seeking jaunt, I pulled into the US Market for the first time. For 18 years I vacantly zipped past this market, never stopping for something as simple as a bag of truffle-flavored potato chips. In all my closed-mindedness, I had assumed that this quickie mart only stocked items like Pringles and mystery meats warming on hot dog rollers, vape pens and a library of cigarettes and, of consequence to me, undesirable Diet Coke in plastic bottles. After all, the quickie mart was until recently named something like Smokes N’ Grub.
The big news: it turns out this US Market stocks Diet Coke in cans.
So there I was. I cracked open the 16 oz. can of Diet Coke—which is 4 oz. too much in my opinion—this past November and sat in the car for a moment, reveling in my fine day, which included great turns, and now, a great Diet Coke. Before me, I noticed some prime touring beta. US Market’s storefront windows are wrapped in a not-quite-lifesize photo of Broken Top and the Three Sisters. Prime local ski touring terrain. Since that November stop, if we are calling it a bi-monthly addiction, which we are, I’ve made, say, three or four more purchases at the shop, each time studying ski lines while sipping my cold elixir.
On my most recent visit a few days ago, my touring partner Barry and I took a longer moment to ingest the beta wallpapered before us through the battered wind screen of my beloved and duct-taped Prius. (For the record, Barry got a preservative-laced ice-cream cookie sandwich. I snagged a Diet Coke.)
If you’re fully exhausted after a tour, sit in your vehicle (drive-in style), enjoy your Diet Coke in a can, and mindsurf.
It’s fair to say the US Market touring beta is good, but not definitive. For example, those looking for an efficient line for the Three Sisters Traverse should look elsewhere. Or, if you are skinning in from the west, find another beta source. But, I assure you, there are informational nuggets to glean as you eat your ice cream and crush a can of Diet Coke. (Barry indicates life sized storefront photos of mountains are perhaps preferable to tiny, pinch and zoom images on a smartphone, as it’s easier to mindsurf lines when you can see all the mountain at once.)
If you are in Bend and seek very general touring beta and a canned Diet Coke, or any other vice, for that matter, the NW Albany street US Market is your go-to.
Postscript
1: Sadly, though, this US Market only stocks 16oz. cans—12oz. cans are preferred. It’s like the difference between a regular can of beer and a tall boy. Sometimes more isn’t better.
2: Since when is “six” or “6” the new numerical benchmark for SEO? Is “5 best…” Not enough any more?
