tseeb
Well-known member
My friends arrived at South Tahoe Tues. evening having skied Kirkwood for their first day of their seasons. They reported good snow, but both the Backside and the Wall were not yet open. We poached a lakefront hot tub, then went to Tahoe Lakeside Inn where we had a good dinner and signed up for cards that got as a free breakfast there the next morning. I won a couple bucks playing video Blackjack and we stopped by Mr. Ps for a beer and live music on the way back to the cabin. I was on the tram at 9:30 the next morning and my friends were a little behind due to delay booting up and buying their 2-for-1 tickets. We did 5 groomed runs on Sky Chair before moving to Nevada. The sun was out and groomed runs were very good, but off-trail was too firm. I dropped into Milky Way Bowl on my way to Nevada and found it skiable although much less well covered than usual. We skied upper Nevada runs before moving to Olympic where we skied to both Nevada bases. From Boulder base we had to shuttle to Stagecoach base as North Bowl chair was not running. It was worth the very short wait for way too warm shuttle as snow was excellent on lower Nevada Trail and very good on still shady Boulder Bowl.
To return to Tamarack Lodge at the top of the gondola, we skied the East Peak run, where snow had softened nicely in the warm sun. We went up Dipper chair and skied the Big Dipper run, before going up again and going to Tamarack Lodge for lunch. We took about an hour break before heading up Tamarack chair. I skied Little Dipper Bowl, which wasd\ ungroomed, but steep and noth-facing enough to have good snow. We skied Comet run one more time, but it did not ski as well as we expected and is not as steep as it looks from East Peak Run. We then went up and skied Dipper one more time, before returning to CA. I dropped off the road into soft powder that did not ski well and left me with a hike to Sky chair. We took one more run on Ridge Run into Roundabout to end the day. They were no longer letting you take any of the steep shortcuts on Roundabout. EpicMix counted 25 lifts and 27.4K vertical
My friends headed for home so I was on my own for the lakefront hot tub. After dinner at the cabin, I went to Starbucks to try the Internet there, but it was not very satisfactory. Thursday, I repeated a lot of what I skied on Wednesday, although conditions were much different. Instead of bright sun, with clouds moving in only at the end of the day, there was intermittent drizzle all the way to 10,000 feet where it tried to freeze to my goggles.
I went by Waterfall, which according the the grooming map was groomed overnight, but was not so I headed down Cat Track instead. The grooming map was very misleading this day as it also showed Ridge Bowl was groomed and it was not. Sky Canyon, Ellies-Swing and Ellies-Lower were all shown as groomed and were all not groomed and not open. Sky Canyon did not even look skiable. My theories are that either grooming map is a prediction based on all groomers working 100% for the entire night (and they usually don’t) or grooming some of the run-out of a run marks the entire run as groomed. I asked Heavenly on their blog about it, but they did not reply.
The snow became saturated with water which improved the off-trail and un-groomed runs. It almost skied like corn and was mostly not sticky. I skied down Boulder Bowl where it was getting sticky, and since I just missed a shuttle to Stagecoach, went up the slow chair and did it again, meeting shuttle at the bottom. After moe skiing, then a quick snack at Tamarack lodge, where there was some industry function going on, I returned to CA. I found the ungroomed and advanced Ridge Bowl and Double Down runs both skied very well, then finished my day going down the left side of Waterfall and Roundabout. EpicMix counted 24 lifts/26.4K vertical while my watch counted 25/27.2K vertical. I went back to the cabin where I had more to eat, packed and cleaned cabin, then showered before loading up and turning off cabin. I could have stayed another day, but as I feared the saturated snow froze overnight and according to my friend who skied Friday 1/27 at Northstar did not soften. With 5 days on this trip, I doubled my ski days for the year, but am still well behind my pace of last year. Nothing big is forecast for Tahoe and they need another multi-foot storm to get close to 100% operation.
To return to Tamarack Lodge at the top of the gondola, we skied the East Peak run, where snow had softened nicely in the warm sun. We went up Dipper chair and skied the Big Dipper run, before going up again and going to Tamarack Lodge for lunch. We took about an hour break before heading up Tamarack chair. I skied Little Dipper Bowl, which wasd\ ungroomed, but steep and noth-facing enough to have good snow. We skied Comet run one more time, but it did not ski as well as we expected and is not as steep as it looks from East Peak Run. We then went up and skied Dipper one more time, before returning to CA. I dropped off the road into soft powder that did not ski well and left me with a hike to Sky chair. We took one more run on Ridge Run into Roundabout to end the day. They were no longer letting you take any of the steep shortcuts on Roundabout. EpicMix counted 25 lifts and 27.4K vertical
My friends headed for home so I was on my own for the lakefront hot tub. After dinner at the cabin, I went to Starbucks to try the Internet there, but it was not very satisfactory. Thursday, I repeated a lot of what I skied on Wednesday, although conditions were much different. Instead of bright sun, with clouds moving in only at the end of the day, there was intermittent drizzle all the way to 10,000 feet where it tried to freeze to my goggles.
I went by Waterfall, which according the the grooming map was groomed overnight, but was not so I headed down Cat Track instead. The grooming map was very misleading this day as it also showed Ridge Bowl was groomed and it was not. Sky Canyon, Ellies-Swing and Ellies-Lower were all shown as groomed and were all not groomed and not open. Sky Canyon did not even look skiable. My theories are that either grooming map is a prediction based on all groomers working 100% for the entire night (and they usually don’t) or grooming some of the run-out of a run marks the entire run as groomed. I asked Heavenly on their blog about it, but they did not reply.
The snow became saturated with water which improved the off-trail and un-groomed runs. It almost skied like corn and was mostly not sticky. I skied down Boulder Bowl where it was getting sticky, and since I just missed a shuttle to Stagecoach, went up the slow chair and did it again, meeting shuttle at the bottom. After moe skiing, then a quick snack at Tamarack lodge, where there was some industry function going on, I returned to CA. I found the ungroomed and advanced Ridge Bowl and Double Down runs both skied very well, then finished my day going down the left side of Waterfall and Roundabout. EpicMix counted 24 lifts/26.4K vertical while my watch counted 25/27.2K vertical. I went back to the cabin where I had more to eat, packed and cleaned cabin, then showered before loading up and turning off cabin. I could have stayed another day, but as I feared the saturated snow froze overnight and according to my friend who skied Friday 1/27 at Northstar did not soften. With 5 days on this trip, I doubled my ski days for the year, but am still well behind my pace of last year. Nothing big is forecast for Tahoe and they need another multi-foot storm to get close to 100% operation.
