tseeb
Well-known member
Day 37 for the year (includes a short afternoon at Sundance) and day 9 of trip which ties a trip to So. Tahoe in 1997 for most days in a row that I can remember. I had thought about trying to get home Wed. night after getting TV in living room working again, but was too tired to pack, clean and close-up the cabin so I picked up a little and starting cleaning before going to Lakeside Inn for Happy Hour. Then I poached lakeview hot tub and went to Safeway for some shopping before returning to cabin early.
The drive to Kirkwood was barely 45 minutes with only one spot where melting snow had frozen across my lane and one place where snow had blown onto the road. I parked about five cars from Cornice lift and went into ticket office to get ticket from my $359 Tahoe Value pass and asked if they were doing anything for passholders from Sunday, when they shutdown for 2 hours and gave ticketholders another day. The short answer was no. They warned me that my pass was not valid at Kirkwood on Sat. and once again asked me to put ticket on in their presence. I guess they are concerned you could sell the ticket in parking lot and go to Heavenly to ski for the day or maybe their controls are so bad they can tell that your Heavenly/Northstar pass is valid, but not if you have already received a Kirkwood ticket that day.
I was at Kirkwood because Backside was closing on 4/8 and I had not made it there on 4/1 plus qualifying for the Extreme Ski competition was Thursday and a friend of a friend was competing. I dropped my lunch under a tree and watched some of women qualifying including a couple who crashed after dropping 10 footers into steeps. I continued to the Backside and going up saw some wind-sifted snow past The Wave, towards Covered Wagon, where the drag lifts were not running. The hike was short and I found untracked snow, but it was challenging to make good turns. Snow was crusted on top, a little better in the middle and OK toward the bottom, especially on my second run where I found trees that had protected it from the sun. It seemed like it had gotten warmer at Kirkwood on Tues/Wed than at Heavenly.
Three times up the slow Backside chair was enough for me. At the top, I hiked with skis on a little way up 99 steps, but it was tough climbing in the steep and breakable crust. I was able to make a few tracks, then moved past Thunder Saddle and came down Moon Bowl, where snow was good at the top. The rest of the way down I was near the rope blocking where competitors where qualifying and found snow very difficult. It was crusted or, even worse, frozen coral reef with some wind-sift in places.
I watched a couple of men’s qualifying runs, and then moved to high-speed Cornice chair. It had been snowing lightly to moderately at times in the morning with some sun breaks. I took two runs before going to the car to get my goggles. Then, I took one more Cornice run before going up The Wall and skiing Eagle Bowl, where I could not avoid the frozen coral reef, to where I had left my lunch by the bottom of the competition. I had missed the end of qualifying and ate half my sandwich while watching staff pickup, then put the rest of my lunch in my pockets.
It now was snowing steadily and visibility looked poor at the top of The Wall so I went up the Reut and found very good fast groomed snow on Conestoga. There were some sun breaks so I put on my helmet liner and went up The Wall, skiing the ridge to skier’s left of Eagle Bowl, then going off the northwest side of Norm’s Nose where snow was not as good as it had looked from the chair in most place. I continued down on Conestoga to Cornice chair where black groomed runs skied great as they had close to an inch of new snow and still had some corduroy from the groomers. I did Monte Wolf, Zachary’s, then excellent, fast, Sentinel twice, including once past Cave Rock, through the Ditch of Doom to Timber Creek base.
I finished with 20K vertical and my watched showed 200,040 vertical feet for the 8 days I wore it skiing (I couldn’t find it on early up day at Heavenly). I had one great powder day at Kirkwood, two powder days at Northstar, two days with day-old powder at Alpine and Heavenly. Surface conditions were better than last year at the same time when 10+ feet of snow fell before I got there during windy storms that ended warm and mostly turned to spring skiing as temperatures rose too quickly and did not drop enough overnight to re-freeze by the end of the week. This year, Kirkwood claims a base of 178-186" on total snowfall of 250-255”.
The drive to Kirkwood was barely 45 minutes with only one spot where melting snow had frozen across my lane and one place where snow had blown onto the road. I parked about five cars from Cornice lift and went into ticket office to get ticket from my $359 Tahoe Value pass and asked if they were doing anything for passholders from Sunday, when they shutdown for 2 hours and gave ticketholders another day. The short answer was no. They warned me that my pass was not valid at Kirkwood on Sat. and once again asked me to put ticket on in their presence. I guess they are concerned you could sell the ticket in parking lot and go to Heavenly to ski for the day or maybe their controls are so bad they can tell that your Heavenly/Northstar pass is valid, but not if you have already received a Kirkwood ticket that day.
I was at Kirkwood because Backside was closing on 4/8 and I had not made it there on 4/1 plus qualifying for the Extreme Ski competition was Thursday and a friend of a friend was competing. I dropped my lunch under a tree and watched some of women qualifying including a couple who crashed after dropping 10 footers into steeps. I continued to the Backside and going up saw some wind-sifted snow past The Wave, towards Covered Wagon, where the drag lifts were not running. The hike was short and I found untracked snow, but it was challenging to make good turns. Snow was crusted on top, a little better in the middle and OK toward the bottom, especially on my second run where I found trees that had protected it from the sun. It seemed like it had gotten warmer at Kirkwood on Tues/Wed than at Heavenly.
Three times up the slow Backside chair was enough for me. At the top, I hiked with skis on a little way up 99 steps, but it was tough climbing in the steep and breakable crust. I was able to make a few tracks, then moved past Thunder Saddle and came down Moon Bowl, where snow was good at the top. The rest of the way down I was near the rope blocking where competitors where qualifying and found snow very difficult. It was crusted or, even worse, frozen coral reef with some wind-sift in places.
I watched a couple of men’s qualifying runs, and then moved to high-speed Cornice chair. It had been snowing lightly to moderately at times in the morning with some sun breaks. I took two runs before going to the car to get my goggles. Then, I took one more Cornice run before going up The Wall and skiing Eagle Bowl, where I could not avoid the frozen coral reef, to where I had left my lunch by the bottom of the competition. I had missed the end of qualifying and ate half my sandwich while watching staff pickup, then put the rest of my lunch in my pockets.
It now was snowing steadily and visibility looked poor at the top of The Wall so I went up the Reut and found very good fast groomed snow on Conestoga. There were some sun breaks so I put on my helmet liner and went up The Wall, skiing the ridge to skier’s left of Eagle Bowl, then going off the northwest side of Norm’s Nose where snow was not as good as it had looked from the chair in most place. I continued down on Conestoga to Cornice chair where black groomed runs skied great as they had close to an inch of new snow and still had some corduroy from the groomers. I did Monte Wolf, Zachary’s, then excellent, fast, Sentinel twice, including once past Cave Rock, through the Ditch of Doom to Timber Creek base.
I finished with 20K vertical and my watched showed 200,040 vertical feet for the 8 days I wore it skiing (I couldn’t find it on early up day at Heavenly). I had one great powder day at Kirkwood, two powder days at Northstar, two days with day-old powder at Alpine and Heavenly. Surface conditions were better than last year at the same time when 10+ feet of snow fell before I got there during windy storms that ended warm and mostly turned to spring skiing as temperatures rose too quickly and did not drop enough overnight to re-freeze by the end of the week. This year, Kirkwood claims a base of 178-186" on total snowfall of 250-255”.
