Mt. Hood Meadows has shut down for the week to prepare for Spring Break with a new terrain park, and Timberline is restricting its lower-mountain access to its terrain parks, with snow levels unusually low for mid-March.

About three inches of rain fell on Mount Hood over the past weekend, exposing rocks, grass and mud at lower elevations. Fortunately, the snow is holding up better at upper elevations, so there will be some terrain available for the spring season.

“This weekend’s soaking requires us to take some time to make reparations to our snowpack,” said resort spokesman Dave Tragethon. “We need to emphasize that we don’t need new snow to reopen as is the case with the other ski resorts in the Northwest that can’t operate. We just need time to harvest and haul the snow we have in reserve to patch and fortify our snowpack to present a quality skiing and snowboarding product.”

Timberline closed Sunday as the storm hammered the mountain, but reopened Monday morning, with several terrain parks and the Magic Mile open. The Stormin’ Norman chair was open to provide access to freestyle terrain only.

Meadows plans to reopen on Friday, and has started collaborating with Snow Park Technologies on a large upper-elevation park they are calling the Cascade Spring Park. The park is scheduled to open on Saturday, March 21, and Tom Scully, Meadows’ Director of Mountain Operations, says “It will share a lot of the character and fun of last year’s Vista Spring Park, but going to Cascade gives us more variety, flow and greater snow coverage.”

Meadows and Timberline both intend to continue stockpiling and redistributing what snow they do have, and to make more snow if temperatures allow. The forecast calls for a mix of sunshine, rain and snow for the week leading up to Spring Break.

The snowpack at 6,000 feet is about a third of normal on Mount Hood for this time of year, and the lowest on record. However, there is significantly more snow at 7,500 feet, which bodes well for spring riding on Cascade, Vista, Palmer and the Mile — assuming the weather cooperates over Spring Break.

Employees at lower-elevation Mt. Hood Skibowl have transitioned from their winter to summer seasons at the earliest date ever, with Alpine Slide rides, mini-golf, lift-assisted mountain biking and bungee drops instead of the usual Pond-Skim Snow Beach Festival.

Last modified: March 16, 2015