Mount Hood, above Hood River, Oregon and the Columbia River. Photo: TownLift

GOVERNMENT CAMP, Oregon. — The cool place to be, both literally and figuratively, for many Park City athletes in the summertime is Oregon. For decades, families have proudly send their winter athletes to Mt. Hood to train in the summer due to the abundance of snow that lingers well after it has melted elsewhere around North America.

Mt. Hood’s elevation is 11, 245 feet, the Timberline Lodge is located at 6,000 feet. Silcox Hut is at 7,000 feet. The highest operation point is the top of Palmer Glacier at 8,540 feet.

A few years ago, development athlete Daniel Goldblatt belonged to his local, weekend, alpine ski race team on the East Coast. After spending annual winter school-break vacations traveling to ski in Park City with his family to enjoy big-mountain chute lines and collect NASTAR platinum pins, the next logical step was to attend a Mt. Hood Camp.

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Goldblatt said, “Skiing in the summertime felt mostly normal once I was on the glacier, but it was very strange sleeping in the warm weather at the base and putting on my ski gear as if it were winter.” I met new people from other states but by funny coincidence, I also happened to meet the person who ended up being my ‘buddy’ in high school in DC.” Athletes like Goldblatt gain the rare opportunity to rub shoulders with elite athletes in Mt. Hood. He said, “The huckleberry milkshake certainly lived up to its reputation but a highlight was spotting Ted Ligety on a chair lift.”

Speaking of elite athletes from Park City, the Macuga family of Park City has more than a few. The siblings may run into each other at home less and less as non-traditional sports-focused high schools, traditional colleges offering online courses, and international competition circuits edge their way into the family dynamic, but they ran into each other in Mt. Hood this month to the delight of Dan Macuga.

The fourth and final member of Team Macuga, sister Sam, was simultaneously, coincidentally training and competing in the sport of ski jumping at a nordic summer venue in Colorado.

If you can do it in the winter in Park City, they’ve got a camp for it in the summer in Mt. Hood.

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Federation International de Ski (FIS) wrote in a statement sourced from US Ski and Snowboard about the US moguls team wrapping up its camp, “An abundance of snow and the ‘Olympic quality jump site’ Timberline provided meant sharing the training venue with other nations as training opportunities are still limited around the world due to impacts from COVID-19. Canada took advantage and had some of their top athletes training up on the Palmer Glacier. Ikuma Horishima of Japan, one of the top mogul skiers in the world, reached out to the U.S. Team and trained with the group at the UOP and Timberline in what the team described as a sportsmanship exchange program.”