tseeb
Well-known member
I was trying to get to Mammoth for Memorial Day, but ended up 185 miles away at Donner Ski Ranch, which was the only CA ski area besides Mammoth still running lifts. Which I checked temps about 6 am, skiing near Mammoth at 30 degrees seemed like a better choice than near Truckee which was almost 40. But Mammoth was over three hours away, would mean a lot longer drive home and I had already canceled my room. So it was Donner Ski Ranch or hiking for turns. I was already tired from leaving San Jose a little after 4:30 am, driving 4 hours, skiing Squaw from 9 to 1, then going mountain biking for about an hour in the afternoon near Prosser Lake, north of Truckee, where my friend lives.
Considering that it had not frozen and most of the runs on 750 vertical foot chair 1 face southeast, the snow was not bad although it was very soft if you got too far off the groomed. We took two or three runs before they opened chair 2. Chair 2 is steeper and faces north, but is short with only 450 vertical. We tried the ungroomed a couple of times, but it was too soft. The steepest run to skier’s right of the chair was signed double diamond early in the day and had a narrow groomed path that got better as it was skied during the day. The next two runs to skier’s right were intermediate and had good snow that peaked between 10 and 11 am.
We tried chair 3, which has a little more vertical than 2, but is not very steep. On our first run down, we got a couple of drops of rain. We took one more run on chair 3, but it was not steep enough and my skis were sticking so we headed back to chair 2. My friend was slow getting there on a snowboard so I took two runs while he took one. We skied back down chair one to the parking lot about noon where I waxed my skis while my friend got ready to leave. It rained harder, then stopped so I went back up and skied the steeper backside run 3 times and tried the softer snow barely skier’s left of the chair once before skiing down chair 1 to the nearly full parking lot. If I wasn’t having fun, I would not have skied until 1 pm. It rained hard a couple of times leaving the Sierra on I-80. Two fire trucks, an ambulance and a tow truck passed me going to a wreck that had traffic slow for a mile or two above Colfax. Other than a little slowndown near Roseville, I missed the worst of the traffic and got home in just over 4 hours. 22 runs, but only 11.2K
Considering that it had not frozen and most of the runs on 750 vertical foot chair 1 face southeast, the snow was not bad although it was very soft if you got too far off the groomed. We took two or three runs before they opened chair 2. Chair 2 is steeper and faces north, but is short with only 450 vertical. We tried the ungroomed a couple of times, but it was too soft. The steepest run to skier’s right of the chair was signed double diamond early in the day and had a narrow groomed path that got better as it was skied during the day. The next two runs to skier’s right were intermediate and had good snow that peaked between 10 and 11 am.
We tried chair 3, which has a little more vertical than 2, but is not very steep. On our first run down, we got a couple of drops of rain. We took one more run on chair 3, but it was not steep enough and my skis were sticking so we headed back to chair 2. My friend was slow getting there on a snowboard so I took two runs while he took one. We skied back down chair one to the parking lot about noon where I waxed my skis while my friend got ready to leave. It rained harder, then stopped so I went back up and skied the steeper backside run 3 times and tried the softer snow barely skier’s left of the chair once before skiing down chair 1 to the nearly full parking lot. If I wasn’t having fun, I would not have skied until 1 pm. It rained hard a couple of times leaving the Sierra on I-80. Two fire trucks, an ambulance and a tow truck passed me going to a wreck that had traffic slow for a mile or two above Colfax. Other than a little slowndown near Roseville, I missed the worst of the traffic and got home in just over 4 hours. 22 runs, but only 11.2K
