Driving up the access road, the branches of the trees dripped with cold rain falling on the soil. There were five of us packed into the Subaru, our snowshoes piled in the trunk. The chatter soon turned from the fun, casual conversation humming on the ride up to an observation on the surrounding conditions.

“Are we sure there’s snow up there?” Someone (or perhaps everyone) in the car asked. “Yes,” I answered. “We just have to drive higher.” But with each bend up the road I grew less confident in my reply.

The start to the winter felt a complete contrast to the heavy snows the year before. By this January day, we had begun to wonder if the season would arrive in true form at all. Then we reached around 2,400 feet, and found a dusting in the forest. We continued on, and by the time we reached the gate beyond Conners Camp there was nearly a foot of snow on the road. I vigilantly pulled into the set of tracks fellow winter revelers had dug in before us, and crawled the single lane uphill three more miles to our trailhead below the summit.

Oregon’s Coast Range isn’t known for snow. The mountains here generally reach just around 2,500 feet above sea level, with relatively mild Pacific air regulating even the winter to a temperate rainforest. But looking west of Corvallis the Coast Range’s most prominent peak is unmistakable. Marys Peak doesn’t appear in the sense you’d imagine the geographic term. Its profile is like the hump of a bison’s back. The southern summit rounds at 4,097 feet, capped in erosion-resistant gabbro, followed by a ridge slouching long to the north. The Kalapuya named the mountain Tcha Timanwi —a place of spiritual power. When freezing temperatures of the winter months do find their way to lower elevations, the snow starts to pile onto the Peak’s upper reaches. Burying its meadows and weighing on its green fir branches, Marys Peak transforms into a solitary place of backcountry winter recreation.

Across the Willamette Valley, the Cascades sprawl with opportunities to ski, snowboard, and snowshoe. But from Corvallis the two-hour drive is a difficult journey to regularly justify a day trip. Before moving to Oregon, I lived in Pennsylvania, and when it snowed it was right out the door. Here the beginnings of the Coast Range back right to town, and yet the foothills rarely see a snow event capable of even a sled run. So I started asking, “What about up there, at Marys Peak?” The Peak is a place that can somehow have people simultaneously unable to believe there would be snow at all, while the next will tell you to stay away for your own safety. When the low-hanging clouds of the Pacific Northwest winter clear however, the view provides honesty, and in between these groups I learned there is a camp of devotees—a mountain subculture—who make the drive up at the first sight of snow to backcountry and Nordic ski, as well as snowshoe.

There are 12 miles of trail on the mountain, a gradually graded Forest Service road, not to mention its meadows and glades that open to backcountry runs with enough snow—though you won’t find any sort of official Sno Park to start from. Its place for winter recreation is ever-revolving. The access road to the summit currently receives no winter maintenance. Some years back, the road would be closed and gated through winter. And yet years before then it was plowed all the way up.

There was even a more glamorous time for the winter sporting scene at Marys Peak, when for ten years from 1942 to 1952 the Helonskis Ski Club hosted a rope tow and hut at the summit.

Why would this lone mountain in the Coast Range capable of winter recreation see so much inconsistency in access and amenities? The answer likely goes back to the snowpack limited by its elevation and proximity to the maritime, which Dr. David Hill, a professor of Oregon State’s College of Engineering, a snow scientist, and avid backcountry skier explained to me as “highly ephemeral.”

There is also no automated snow monitoring system. So if a skier wants to find out what is going on up there, the only way to know is to go. Following a storm, there could be feet of snow one day, and melting out the next. Usually by late winter though you can count on lingering depth. In a time where we’ve never had more resources to study snowpack, and rightfully accompany what we learn with caution, it’s the kind of place with a fun bit of mystery chasing conditions.

“I load everything in the car — AT, Nordic skis, and snowshoes,” Doug Antelman, who has been skiing the Peak for four years, told me.

Antelman enjoys making the trek over to the Cascades as much as anyone. But once he realized he could eat a casual breakfast at home and be on the snow by late morning he became a regular on Marys Peak, and has since become a staunch presence in online communities sharing the conditions there. He pointed out to me just how quickly it can turn to winter storm, dissipate, and return again. He regularly brings a light rain shell for ski touring on warm days after a big snow, when evergreen branches begin to rain down snow melt. Still, every time he drives up he packs the car with survival gear: shovel, chainsaw, food, blankets, and plenty of gas, should the road be impassable on return.

If it sounds adventurous up there for a place locals drive to for summer picnics and sunsets, that’s because it is. But, with a few considerations, it’s also a relaxed sort of backcountry excursion. According to Hill, the terrain on Marys Peak is generally what we’d consider green circle angle slopes. There is very minimal avalanche factor—a stark contrast to the risk present in many places in the High Cascades. At a local event, Hill shared the Peak is a great place to go for those new to these sports to experience a novel slice of backcountry. He’s been up there with five feet of snow, and mentioned, it’s hard to find another place like it, with high open terrain, and access. It’s a unique place outside an Oregon community where you can skin up to an open summit with sweeping views of the Valley and snow-capped volcanoes beyond without taking on the concerns of larger mountains.

For me the drive up with our snowshoes was a scouting trip, a foray of self discovery to confirm for myself whether I had in fact found my close to home place to tour on skis.

We parked at the Saddle Meadow, some 600 feet and a few miles trek below the summit. Pulling on our snowshoes in the lot, we watched as a family took their sleds down the slope that is covered with wildflowers come summer. Finding our orientation, we looked at our map and our available course between the access road and our other option across the open ridge. We chose the latter and started to traverse, making first tracks toward the summit. Within a half mile we crossed into the Forest Service’s small, lightly developed campground. From there we stomped to the Meadowedge trailhead. The short loop makes a winding ascent along Parker Creek through stands of noble fir. With the switchbacks up the narrow, graded path we were reminded how tiring climbing through snow can be. We had all spent time on the mountain, but when we stopped and stared up through the snow-caked branches—their tops tipping with the wind and streams of cloud-filtered light passing through their branches— it was as if we were on a mountain we’d never seen before.

Perhaps no skier knows the mountain more intimately than John Radetich. Radetich moved to the Corvallis area in the late 60s on a track and field scholarship to OSU and never left. His sister-in-law gave him a pair of skis and we know how that story goes. In 1973, on an early spring day, Radetich made his first ski trip up to Marys Peak. He’s been earning telemark turns there ever since.

When the road is passable, Radetich will drive all the way to the main parking lot below the summit, and regularly spend his time lapping runs on the few hundred feet of vertical found on the open mountain face. When the road is socked in with deep snow, he’ll stop driving wherever seems best and begin skinning up the road itself or the East Ridge Trail from Conners Camp. When the snow depth has become significant and filled in lower elevations, Radetich echoes the suggestion of many others and will travel over to the North Ridge trailhead on the other side of the mountain. There, you can usually drive a bare road right to the trail and make a short walk to the snowline to throw on skis.

When you ask Radetich about skiing Marys Peak, he describes it not in a generalized way you expect for a place of obscurity, but with the character of a beloved destination. He and his friends named their favorite run Fool’s Swoop. “You can get 12 or 14 good turns there,” Radetich shared with me. “We called it Fool’s Swoop because we thought, ‘who would be silly enough to do it on skinny skis.’” It’s on the east side of the summit, with good snow out of the prevailing winds coming from the west. He also told me about the glades below the summit surrounding Parker Creek and how he remembered leading a friend down for the first time and they made an unexpected jump across the streambed. He has since named the line after them in memoriam of their passing.

Radetich’s most vivid memory though is when he describes to me the meadows at the parking area he calls the bowl. And how once, on an icy night under the light of a full moon, he and a fellow skier spent the dark hours flat spinning down the slope beneath the lunar glow. “You can see the moon reflected in each crystal and look out and see the lights of the city.”

For six decades Radetich has accumulated memories and a sense of the mountain standing over the valley on the most granular level. With sincerity he shared, “It’s my place. Where I feel like I’m on top of the world.”

Following Parker Creek toward the top of the Meadowedge Trail our group approached the last of the trees before the trail opened onto the West Meadow not far from the summit. We could hear the light wind cutting into the forest. We continued out into the open bald, feeling the prevailing gusts from the west push against us and scour the fresh snow across the open face.

We had had a late start, and, with the short days of January, we enjoyed a few moments of the view before deciding it was time to turn back. We pivoted clumsily on our snowshoes and toward the trees. I took one last look out across the meadow, then down into the glade of fir, their trunks draped with beards of lichen, in the gulch surrounding Parker Creek. I knew by then I’d be making the trip many times again, and not without my skis.

The Coast Range Island of Winter Recreation: An excursion into the snow scene of Marys Peak

Sunshine, Deep Time, and Rockhounding: Musings from a rookie agate hunter