Skiing

A 13-year-old boy died Wednesday morning after crashing into a tree while snowboarding at Mt. Bachelor resort in Bend.

Last year the Utah-based POWDR announced a plan to sell the Central Oregon ski resort near Bend.

Friends found the couple deceased shortly before midnight. Their bodies were buried by an avalanche in Happy Valley, a popular winter recreation area near Broken Top Mountain in the Central Cascades mountain range. Search and rescue crews recovered the bodies Tuesday morning.

Fresh white powder falling onto Northwest mountaintops last month created the perfect conditions for several ski resorts to open early this season.

The field of prospective buyers is competitive, with some of the largest ski resort owners in the U.S. in the mix, as well as a group of locals trying to preserve Central Oregon's ties to Mt. Bachelor.

As ski enthusiasts hit the slopes, ski patrollers are too. We'll hear from a professional Oregon patroller to learn more about the job.

This year, cooler conditions and increased snowfall have allowed ski resorts in Oregon to open earlier than anticipated.

The company says visitors should expect "business as usual" for the upcoming winter season as JP Morgan Chase looks for a buyer to purchase Mt. Bachelor, one of the Bend area's biggest employers.

In early January, some resorts in Oregon couldn’t open due to lack of snow and others had limited operations because of light snow. And resorts like Mt. Hood Meadows faced additional operational issues earlier this year as well. For Portland’s Eastside High Schools Ski Team, unpredictable weather and canceled trips kicked off the latest ski season.

A spokesperson for the National Weather Service said that snowfall for places like Timberline and Mt. Hood Meadows this weekend could be somewhere between 12 and 24 inches.