Ski at the hotel from The Shining, then move on to uncrowded slopes, on Oregon-Idaho road trip
- Timberline Lodge was the setting for Stanley Kubrick’s horror classic
- From there you can travel to Idaho, stopping off to ski on untouched powdery snow
A dense, cold nighttime fog has descended onto my hotel in the heart of Oregon’s Cascade Mountains. It is a little bit eerie given that this is the very same building that featured in The Shining.
Lovers of horror films will recall the similar conditions at the climax to Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 classic – fortunately, however, I’m not about to be chased around in the snow by an axe-wielding madman: I’m here to go skiing.
For my hotel, Timberline Lodge, is the one and only hotel at Timberline ski resort on Mount Hood, Oregon, and as well as being a Hollywood star it also offers ski in/ski out convenience. By morning the fog has turned into heavy snowfall, which means that although it is high season, the tree-lined slopes are almost empty and I have the shin-deep powder to myself.
Timberline is my second stop on a winter road trip through Oregon and Idaho, which started at Mount Hood Meadows on the opposite side of Mount Hood from Timberline.
When I arrived at Mount Hood Meadows there hadn’t been a snowstorm for several weeks so I got to ski hard-packed pistes in brilliant sunshine. Not the best ski conditions, but here too, the slopes were very quiet and offered incredible views across Oregon’s Cascade Mountains, with endless ridges of forests fading blue-green into the distance and peaks such as 10,497ft Mount Jefferson poking their snowbound summits above the trees into a cobalt blue sky.
A storm hits two days later, and from then on it snows almost every day of the trip. I am tempted to remain at Timberline Lodge for more than just one night – it is nowhere near as bleak as it appears in Kubrick’s film, which only actually features the hotel’s exterior.
