jojo_obrien
Member
http://picasaweb.google.com/jobrien9075 ... directlink
Not going to upload pics directly to this website because it's difficult -- my images are too big. Please click on the link.
Sat around the house this morning trying to decide if it was worth the risk of going up there.
Risk: Road problems potentially extremely painful driving conditions because of people very hot to ski/board and snowplayers. Additionally, had no idea if I would be spending a fortune ptexing/repairing my AC40's....
Reward: 1-2 feet of powder on a beautiful Christmas morning. Potentially enough base before the cold front that dropped snow for 1-2 days earlier in the week.
Drove up the road and obviously there were signs of significant flooding last week. The road was clear and fine. About 2 miles north of the village there were barricades saying "open to locals only" -- I drove right around them. (Claremont, my town, is considered local, right???) A few "river crossings" w/ my Tacoma was a non issue. Felt sorry for the folks w/ Beverly Hills license plate frames driving their Benz's ......get off of my hill LOL....
Got my ticket no problem (no reservation this weekend needed). Got a late start (it was 930 by then)......
Went straight over to Thunder. Did some hiking and sure enough my "secret spot" was untracked....after that, I did lap after lap underneath the lift to the right of the lift, the left of the lift. No rocks. Not light snow, but for SoCal, really nice. Very lightly tracked. I looked for areas that were exposed no trees -- why? The areas with trees had some problems with "cookies" (as Tony calls them). Icicles that drop and leave crusty ice on top of fairly nice snow/pow. Nevertheless, I was absolutely shocked that I wasn't hitting bottom. I skiied lightly tracked snow all morning and afternoon long. Saw my buddy Sean on the mountain and invited me to hit up South Bowl -- he said it was really nice, a few tracks and no rocks. I told him not only I forgot my camelback, but I had sucked down a few too many glasses of vino the night before (sorry, she was pretty hot and we were having a good time LOL)...... And furthermore, I was quite content skiing the very lightly tracked lines on Thunder.
Skiied from 9:45 to 1:00 and went back to the Notch for a Gatorade. Went back to Thunder and skiied Goldridge and Goldridge Trees from 1-2. GOldridge was fairly tracked but still some nice lines off to the right as I was skiing down. Then hit the trees -- shocked to find out that there were many untracked lines. My quads were definitely starting to feel the early season jitters and Christmas dinner was calling, so I called it a day early (at 2:15 pm).
Rode the lift down (cannot ski down, really)..need a storm to dump 3-4 feet......quite a few sightseers.
The ride down was slightly painful.......after smelling all of that fresh mountain air I smelled burning brakes of people obviously who have no clue as to how to drive those roads. When I hit the road barricade there was a line of cars about 4 miles long, from the village down , maybe 3 miles.
All in all stoked and shocked that this storm actually dropped enough snow to be in business. Let's hope that Santa brings us a belated Christmas present in the form of 3-4 more feet sometime SOON!
See ya all on the hill! (Surprised I didn't see Tony out there today.....)
jojo
Not going to upload pics directly to this website because it's difficult -- my images are too big. Please click on the link.
Sat around the house this morning trying to decide if it was worth the risk of going up there.
Risk: Road problems potentially extremely painful driving conditions because of people very hot to ski/board and snowplayers. Additionally, had no idea if I would be spending a fortune ptexing/repairing my AC40's....
Reward: 1-2 feet of powder on a beautiful Christmas morning. Potentially enough base before the cold front that dropped snow for 1-2 days earlier in the week.
Drove up the road and obviously there were signs of significant flooding last week. The road was clear and fine. About 2 miles north of the village there were barricades saying "open to locals only" -- I drove right around them. (Claremont, my town, is considered local, right???) A few "river crossings" w/ my Tacoma was a non issue. Felt sorry for the folks w/ Beverly Hills license plate frames driving their Benz's ......get off of my hill LOL....
Got my ticket no problem (no reservation this weekend needed). Got a late start (it was 930 by then)......
Went straight over to Thunder. Did some hiking and sure enough my "secret spot" was untracked....after that, I did lap after lap underneath the lift to the right of the lift, the left of the lift. No rocks. Not light snow, but for SoCal, really nice. Very lightly tracked. I looked for areas that were exposed no trees -- why? The areas with trees had some problems with "cookies" (as Tony calls them). Icicles that drop and leave crusty ice on top of fairly nice snow/pow. Nevertheless, I was absolutely shocked that I wasn't hitting bottom. I skiied lightly tracked snow all morning and afternoon long. Saw my buddy Sean on the mountain and invited me to hit up South Bowl -- he said it was really nice, a few tracks and no rocks. I told him not only I forgot my camelback, but I had sucked down a few too many glasses of vino the night before (sorry, she was pretty hot and we were having a good time LOL)...... And furthermore, I was quite content skiing the very lightly tracked lines on Thunder.
Skiied from 9:45 to 1:00 and went back to the Notch for a Gatorade. Went back to Thunder and skiied Goldridge and Goldridge Trees from 1-2. GOldridge was fairly tracked but still some nice lines off to the right as I was skiing down. Then hit the trees -- shocked to find out that there were many untracked lines. My quads were definitely starting to feel the early season jitters and Christmas dinner was calling, so I called it a day early (at 2:15 pm).
Rode the lift down (cannot ski down, really)..need a storm to dump 3-4 feet......quite a few sightseers.
The ride down was slightly painful.......after smelling all of that fresh mountain air I smelled burning brakes of people obviously who have no clue as to how to drive those roads. When I hit the road barricade there was a line of cars about 4 miles long, from the village down , maybe 3 miles.
All in all stoked and shocked that this storm actually dropped enough snow to be in business. Let's hope that Santa brings us a belated Christmas present in the form of 3-4 more feet sometime SOON!
See ya all on the hill! (Surprised I didn't see Tony out there today.....)
jojo
