Bumming on the Powder Hound (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine February 2003

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Bumming on the Powder Hound (Cont.)


	(Illustration by Mark Todd)

THERE IS SOMETHING PRIMAL about Greyhound. Airlines do not name themselves after animals. The baggage man in Boise said he didn't know why the Portland-bound was 45 minutes late. Yes, drivers carry cell phones, but, he explained, there's a lot of country out there that's out of range: "He's out there on his own."

How a passenger company that never asks your name, understands that you may not possess current ID, and doesn't usually care to look at your luggage knows the following is a mystery, but Greyhound corporate claims that "almost 20% of Greyhound passengers make more than $50,000 per year." In La Grande, Oregon, we took on a slight, blond woman in tight jeans and a black leather jacket. She was tattooed and pretty, in a vodka-pickled sort of way, and instantly gained an audience in the aft half of the bus, explaining through much profanity and stretching how she'd been a gymnastics instructor for 11 years. On full buses, coteries form, and this gal was a leader.

As in prison, cigarettes are currency on the Hound. The sun is up when we pull into an Arby's, and a round man with a chaste mustache and a tubercular cough—Hardy of Laurel and Hardy— waddles in for a cup of coffee, using the 15-minute stop to smoke with much animation. I watch as a younger man, would-be Laurel, asks for a cigarette. There's a twinkle in Hardy's eye. He pulls out a fag and, just as the young man tries to grab it, it's rescinded. This happens several times—seagulls jostling over a cheese puff—to Hardy's glee. Finally he lets Laurel have it, but the driver herds everyone back on the bus. Hardy walks the gauntlet to his seat. "Gooood morning, everybody. Good morning. Good morning." Hardy is an ambassador of the Hound.

Scrappy Pendleton, Oregon, off #6576 to Portland, onto #6063 to Pasco with a stop in Walla Walla. Our new driver wore the fuzzy hat of a gulag guard, standard Greyhound issue. The snow blew in curtains; we drove with chains. Once again, it was just me de-busing; the lonesome skier shoulders his boards in Walla Walla. Humping my gear to the parking lot, I knocked the yellow plastic Western Union sign off the ticket window with my skis. The clerk reached for the phone; I hitched my pants and vamoosed.

The pride of Dayton, Washington, is Bluewood, a Lilliputian nonresort with Brobdingnagian tree skiing. The next morning I caught a ride at Starbucks with Jesse, Erik, and Adam, three students from Walla Walla's Whitman College. These kids are all serious Bluewood season-pass holders. I told them what I was up to, wayfaring through winter, skiing places like this. "You ride the Greyhound," Adam said, "you've earned your trip."



	Sleeping it off on the road to Walla Walla (Sian Kennedy)

These kids know they've got a good thing in Bluewood, a Northwest secret, but they weren't worried about my spoiling it. "The thing about Blue is there's no way to get here," Erik said. The summit, at 5,670 feet, is relatively low, but the area lies under the path of Pacific-fueled storms that drop in and stay for dinner. In the parking lot, we booted up and hopped the shuttle: an honest-to-Jack Frost sleigh. Max and Jake, the local Percherons, let us off at the ancient triple, which spews diesel and smells like a bus station. Even though the eight inches of new was quickly heading toward a foot of fresh, the locals weren't in any hurry. There are never more skiers than Max and Jake can keep up with.

The three amigos showed me their hidden stashes: openings in the thick spruce of the Umatilla National Forest, homegrown runs with no names except Country Road and Champagne off Country Road. We'd lay fresh tracks, rest them for a run, then return to find our ruts filled. I kept an eye out for Bigfoot. On the chair the kids talked of term papers; on the slopes they took me to school. It came down all afternoon—powder sweet as a Walla Walla onion. "Hit the taco truck before you leave town," Jesse advised. "Taco truck is so grub."

"Weren't you here yesterday?" asked the bus-station clerk, gluing together the sign incident in her mind as she stamped my pass.

"I don't think so," I said.

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