a little skiing at Mt.Hood, a lot of relaxing at Timberline

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Thanksgiving with the family in Salem...then up to Mt.Hood on the 25th for some post-turkey day exercise.   Becky and I got a crack of noon start from Timberline and skinned up to the top of the Palmer chair.  The snow up high was a mix of wind-buffed powder and small ribs of ice....perfectly skiable but not exactly great conditions.   As we sat around at the top of the Palmer snowfield and had a snack, a snowcat drove up the slope, turned around and headed back down, leaving a 10ft wide lane of perfectly groomed corduroy.  The Palmer chair wasn't running, so we figured maybe the employee had gone up just to inspect the lift towers or something...but whatever the reason, we were happy to be able to take a break from the variable conditions and hop onto the groomer for some lazy high-speed turns.
We still had a couple hours before sunset, so we toured over towards the west and yo-yoed a couple laps around Little Zig-Zag canyon that held some great calf-deep powder before shuffling back over to Timberline Lodge for a relaxing night of hot-tubbing and dinner.