Hanging with Amy 2017: Part IV - Mt Hood Skibowl Adventure Park

View of Mt Hood from the Skibowl Adventure Park

After driving around the Oregon coast, Amy and I headed up northeast to spend the day playing at Mt Hood Skibowl Adventure Park. I'd heard about this resort about a month before Amy's trip thanks to Facebook advertising. For once it was useful and relevant to my desires! I was intrigued by everything they had to offer in their all day Action Pass. You get 3 premium attractions plus unlimited smaller attractions for only $79. I thought that was a pretty sweet deal considering we'd paid over $100 each for only a couple hours of adventure at Camano Island during Amy's last visit.

We knocked out our three premium attractions first before the crowds arrived. Here we're on the rapid riser, which is basically the opposite of bungee jumping. It was super fun, but a bit uncomfortable since I got a major wedgie during it. I also thought it was broken at first because I was barely moving for the first 5 seconds or so before it flung me in the air. 

Then it was time for actual bungee jumping. I also had a bad wedgie on this one, but it was still super fun. Amy didn't have the wedgie problems that I had on either attraction, so maybe my harness was just too high up my body.

The employee at the top counted down 3, 2, 1, but I didn't jump since I was waiting for her to say "jump" or "go" or something. I had to do the countdown again and say "go" myself before I jumped. Amy took longer to get herself in the right head space before she could jump. My arm was getting tired from keeping my phone up to get a video, so I put it down for a few seconds and ended the video wondering if she would jump at all. Fortunately I started another video just as she jumped off. The employee down at the bottom helping us get off the cushion said he didn't think she was going to jump. Usually when people wait that long, they've psyched themselves out too much to go through with it, but Amy managed it!

And our last premium attraction was the tree tops ropes course. Here's Amy making her way over two of the 6 obstacles. 

I love this middle picture of me!

The obstacles got progressively more difficult, but thankfully the hardest was still nothing compared to the hardest ones on the ropes course around the corner from us. Oscar and I had tried that one only 10 days earlier.

From the ropes course we got a great view of Mt Hood and of the Amazing Maze that Amy and I would brave later on.

The Maze was more fun than I'd expected. In addition to finding your way out of it, you're given a punch card to find all 4 letters of the word MAZE, so you have to explore all of it before you're done.

These pics on the right and left are my pathetic attempt at the children's Jacob's ladder. In all fairness to me, it seemed made more for smaller bodies. I might do better on an adult ladder (maybe...).

On our way over to the mini golf we got a good view of Mt Hood. I'd love to see it without all the haze someday.

 Getting our mini golf on!

After lunch we made our way over to the other side to take the chairlifts up for the Alpine Slide and for fantastic views of Mt Hood and the Skibowl valley.

We first went as high as we could go. The view was more impressive with our eyes than our phone cameras would have you believe. From here they have mountain bike tours and frisbee golf, but we opted out of those (we didn't have our own bikes or frisbees), so we took one chairlift back down and hiked the rest of the way down to the alpine slide.

There was a wedding at the park the day we were there, hence the "wedding guests this way" sign. We kept seeing nicely dressed people around and talked to a few of them. What a neat idea for a wedding venue! More on that later…

And here we are on the slide. It was awesome, and I loved being able to do it as much as I wanted to. The only other time I've gone down an alpine slide was at Whistler mountain, but it was much shorter and we could only do it once with the pass we bought. Amy got going a bit too fast on this one and actually fell off once, but she was uninjured and was able to get back on before anyone else came through.

We then went back over to the other side and got in some batting practice. At first I didn't know I was in the "fast softball" cage. It was terrifying! I didn't have a chance of even tapping the ball. Then we figured out there was a cage for slow softball and I was actually able to hit a few balls.

Here are my sad attempts on the bungee trampoline. Once again I felt I was harnessed too high. I didn't feel like I was able to get the footing I needed to do flips like the girls next to me. I tried to flip as best I could but couldn't manage it. The worst part was it would yank me back hard everytime I attempted a flip and didn't make it.

I had a decent go on the rock wall, though their definition of easy was far from easy. I got to try as many times as I wanted to since no one was in line behind us. A college kid operating it said he usually puts it together and assigns the difficulty level. I told him there wasn't enough room to grip with my hands and especially my feet to call it easy. In about 10 attempts I only managed to get 2/3rds of the way up, though I did improve. If more pieces were bigger, I'm sure I could have made it to the top. I tried the medium course while Amy did the easy, and it really didn't seem any more difficult. The footing was just too challenging.

We also tried balancing on the tightrope. We sucked, but we both improved. I was happy to get both feet on plus an extra step. That's enough to tell me I could walk across the whole thing with enough practice.

Then it was time for the tube slide. This was actually pretty cool. They had the sprinklers on to keep the slides slick. They told me I wouldn't get wet, but I did. Luckily the sun was out!

Their escalator was poorly planned. It was big enough to pull up a person standing on it, but it wasn't big enough for the tubes. Why make one at all if you're not going to make it wide enough for the tubes. The tubes weren't light, either. You really had to drag them, so you got a ride to the top but had to drag your tube the whole time. I felt bad for the poor moms in front of me dragging their kids sitting inside the tubes.

For our final 30 minutes before closing we headed back for one more ride down the alpine slide. It was 3 minutes before closing as we came off the slide, but they let us go on the chairlift again. On our way up we watched the wedding guests and even the happy couple taking the alpine slide down to their reception.

On our way back to Portland we ate here in memory of the movie Fried Green Tomatoes. It was a bit sketchy on the inside, but the food was good. What a great day!

Here's a video of our adventures, though for some reason Google included Thor's Well from our previous day.