Mt Hood Meadows Ski Resort

Mt Hood Meadows is the best and the largest of the Mt Hood ski resorts. It has the best lift infrastructure, the most terrain variety, and the most established facilities and services. As to be expected, it’s also the most popular and you have to pay a little more for lift tickets compared to neighbouring ski areas.

Mt Hood Meadows in Oregon doesn’t have any lodging on-mountain and only limited Mt Hood lodging options exist nearby, so rather than being much of a destination resort, it’s mostly a commuter resort from nearby Portland, the largest city in Oregon. Weekend crowds can be brutal, but mid-week the skier (and road) traffic is very reasonable. Combined with cheap mid-week lift passes and accommodation deals, Mt Hood Meadows is a great prospect for out-of-towners to visit on weekdays.

Pros and Cons of Mt Hood Meadows

Pros

• Mt Hood Meadows is refreshingly a far cry from the cookie cutter destination American ski resort.
• Lift tickets are very well priced mid-week.
• Mt Hood Meadows Ski Resort has very good intermediate terrain and decent expert terrain.
• The terrain variety is excellent.
• If you need even more diversity, there are a couple of other Mt Hood ski resorts worth hitting up.
• The lift infrastructure is very good.

Cons

• Mt Hood has a lot of prominence and it’s exposed and often windy. The weather can close lifts which reduces the terrain size, as does the degree of avalanche work required post-storm.
• Due to its proximity to a big city, Mt Hood Meadows Ski Resort can get very frenetic on weekends, and weekday powder days can also get a little busy.
• Many of the slopes have an unfavourable aspect to retain snow quality.
• There is no on-mountain accommodation.

Pro or Con Depending On Your Perspective

• Mt Hood scores lots of snow but as you’d expect for the PNW, it can be a bit heavy.

Mt Hood Meadows Ski and Snowboard Terrain

Mt Hood Meadows Ski Resort aka Shreadows is not as big as Mt Bachelor but it’s still decent sized, that is when everything is open. Meadows has 2,150 acres of skiable terrain, 87 marked trails, and 13 lifts (6 are express chair lifts). The lift serviced vertical is 2,777 ft (2,043 ft if top lift closed) and an additional 1,700 vertical feet of expert terrain is attained via hiking.

The trail statistics of 15% beginner, 50% intermediate, 20% advanced and 15% expert appropriately demonstrates that there is terrain for all abilities and its strength is the abundance of intermediate cruisers. The expert runs are mostly rather short, but the stats downplay the huge number of marked double black diamond trails. These are accessed via gates that the patrollers progressively open during “storm recovery”, and the large Heather Canyon in particular is rather avalanche prone with many lines terminating into a choke point.

A huge forte of Mt Hood Meadows is the interesting terrain, both alpine and below treeline, that has plenty of variety. It’s not like Mt Bachelor, a conical volcano where the lava flows are all pretty identical, and the faces all feel similar. Mt Hood Meadows has lots of ridges and many runs feel very different.

Mt Hood Meadows has multiple terrain parks and usually a couple of pipes, and much of this is open for night skiing.

Where is Mt Hood Meadows Oregon?

Mt Hood Meadows is situated on the southeast flank of the imposing Mount Hood. Meadows is 67 miles southeast of Portland. It’s an extra 20 minute drive past Mt Hood SkiBowl if you come the standard way, but it’s worth it.

See the Mt Hood Meadows travel page for more information on location and how to get there.

Mt Hood Meadows Lodging

There is no slopeside lodging at Meadows, with the closest accommodations being at Government Camp (11 miles) and Timberline (16 miles). Or coming in from the northeast, which is an easier drive, you can stay at Cooper Spur Mountain Resort (14 miles) or the vibrant town of Hood River (35 miles away).

See the Mt Hood lodging page for more information.

Facilities

Mt Hood Meadows has very well developed facilities and services across multiple buildings at the main base. Even some of the restrooms are rather lovely!

There are several eating options ranging from quick bites, a coffee shop and cafeteria fare to the lovely Alpenstube Restaurant which can become rather vibrant. There is also a very large brown baggers area, yet people still complain that it’s not big enough!

Other services include a day care center (from 6 weeks old), snowsports school, ski and snowboard equipment rentals, and a couple of retail shops.

Activities

A Nordic Center is situated at the HRM parking lot where there are 15km of groomed trails through the forest and you guessed it.. some meadows! A few snowshoeing trails are available over at the main base.