Page 96: Monkey Trails

In December 2014 I spent a night at the Timberline Lodge in order to take the photo for page 142 of The Billionth Monkey. The next day, as I had lunch in the Ram’s Head Bar before getting on the road, I noted the skiers and snowboarders returning from the slopes: What were they wearing? What were they doing? What were they talking about?

The Ram's Head Bar on the second floor of the lodge offers stunning views of Mount Hood
(image from the Timberline Lodge website).

One thing I noticed was a lot of generational slang. The other was a lot of skiing lingo, which was very helpful. All these details informed my writing of this scene.

The view from my room at the Timberline Lodge.

A “monkey trail” is snowboarder slang for a small trail—often through the woods—of the main trail. This term allowed me to slip in another #MonkeyReference. For more snowboarding terminology, see http://www.abc-of-snowboarding.com/snowboarddictionary.asp.

I wandered around back looking for a Snow Cat, but didn't find one.
This was worrisome. What had Jack done with it?