The best things to do in Bend for January
December 23, 2025
10 minute readRainbow Connection
In search of the ephemeral joy of a winter that wasn’t—yet
People often ask me for travel tips. Where should we go? What should we do? Is such-and-such good for families? As a contributing editor at Outside magazine and travel writer for the past 25 years, I can now tell myself I might know a thing or two about this. For decades editors sent me around the world to awesome places—and some terrible ones, too—so I could tell a story and hopefully inspire you to embark on your own adventures. I tell you this for context because the past few weeks in Bend have offered some of the most extraordinary, unique moments I’ve had, anywhere. Some friends and I have a name for it. We call it Bend’s “rainbow season.”
That’s more poetic than literal. It’s true we have been seeing a lot of rainbows lately thanks to Bend being on the fringes of those massive atmospheric rivers that only grazed our sunny oasis. But the name fits because it’s all been so ephemeral. Rainbows don’t last. You can’t plan them or know where they’ll be. That’s the beauty, though, right? They’re there when they’re there and you just have to be there when they are.
Maybe you see where I’m going with this, that the best travel experiences are often the ones you just happen to happen into. So beyond opining on the best hiking in South Africa (the Drakensberg) or Beijing’s coolest hutong (Zhengjue), my advice always returns to the simple: Forget what you think a place is supposed to be to make room for a surprise.
Specifically, I’m talking about just how freakishly warm it has been here lately. Bend is supposed to be synonymous with winter now. We expect it. We want it. We swap out our tires and carry chains for it. Last year Mt. Bachelor opened two weeks before Thanksgiving. Two weeks before that, by Halloween, Bend had so much snow you could have given trick-or-treaters candy canes and it wouldn’t have been weird.
Now? It was 62 degrees on my hike up Pilot Butte last weekend (rainbow!). I wore a T-shirt to the Santa paddle in the Old Mill and sat outside without a jacket at Podski. A friend took a walk and saw daffodils blooming. “Poor things!” she cried.
She’s right, of course. The flowers won’t last and neither will this. Snow is on the way and with any luck we’ll be skiing by Christmas. As a winter lover and diehard skier myself, I cannot wait for things to return to “normal.” There is hope. The last time the mountain opened so late we ended up with a whopping 600 inches of snowfall by spring. Bring it, I say.
For now, though, I’m taking advantage of this weird, whacky, wonderful time and all the unexpected joys (and mushrooms!) it brings, which is a lot better for my mental health than arguing about climate change. Call it what you will but this rainbow season has been such an unusual gift. I wandered out to Tumalo Falls on a gorgeous, snow-free road now closed to cars and had the place all to myself (rainbow!). Mountain bikers at Phil’s rave about just how good the singletrack is right now, so tacky and firm. On a hike from Tumalo State Park to Riley Ranch Nature Reserve along the Deschutes River Trail last weekend, I sat in the warm sun with my dog, skipping rocks and tossing sticks. My teenage daughter went camping. At Pine Mountain Observatory. Without a negative 40–degree sleeping bag. And she was fine!
All of this to say that Bend is an outstanding place in any season, deserving of all the hype you’ve heard, and it truly counts as my favorite place in the whole wide world for all that it offers, the people it attracts, and the landscapes and High Desert skies that make time here feel like there’s nowhere else you’d rather be. These past few weeks have proven what so many years on the road drilled into me and form the core of my travel advice, that even if you’ve been somewhere a million times, the best places always keep a few surprises up their puffy sleeves.
Some are fleeting. Some endure. In Bend, all of them are worth looking for.
