This activity list is intended for those who might not be very familiar with the Lake Tahoe area, but staying at our house in Tahoe Vista, on the north side of the lake. The whole lake is a big tourist destination year round but the north side is less built up than the south side. There’s of course lots more info available on the web. Read more “Things to Do Around Lake Tahoe”
Hoan’s extended family came up to the Tahoe house for 4th of July weekend and Darlene and I were able to join them. Six adults and six kids at the house! Over the course of four days, we caught the fireworks at Donner Lake, checked out the nearby North Tahoe Regional Park, hiked up to the vista point on the Tahoe Rim Trail above the house (and Brockway Summit) for a sunset view, kayaked from Homewood to Sugar Point State Park (and back), hiked from Donner Summit through the old train tunnels and hung out a bit at Kings Beach. Hoan, Samantha, Justine and Phong also gave one of the Tahoe Treetop Adventure Parks a try. (One of them is just a mile or so from the house.)
Click through for the full gallery – my pics plus some from everybody else:
Troy, Resi and Aiden came up to the Tahoe house in mid-April to get a couple of last days in before Homewood and several other Tahoe resorts had their closing weekend. Definitely spring skiing conditions with slush (and mud) at the bottom and, up top, overnight frozen snow turning too soft mid-way through the day. But then, as they headed back to the Bay Area, the temperatures dropped and we got another snow storm Sunday night. Jon joined me at Alpine Meadows and then Squaw Valley to enjoy a last couple of powder days for the season!
Troy got a friendly visit from a bear overnight. He woke to find all four doors on his truck open and the evidence of a bit of ransacking from a dirty bear – so lucky it was unlocked or the bear might have broken in:
A cute little video of Pan falling asleep at the wheel:
I haven’t been skiing at Mammoth since the early nineties, after college, but it’s where I learned to ski in high school from nearby Bishop. And I had forgotten what a great big and diverse ski mountain it is – though I’m sure I also wasn’t skiing as much of any mountain’s terrain back then either. Anyway, driving to Mammoth from Santa Cruz/San Jose in the winter isn’t very convenient (given all the Sierra passes are closed) and you have to essentially drive by many other great ski resorts to do it. However, with an extended stay at our new place in Tahoe last week, it was easy to hop down to Mammoth for a couple of days (just a three hour drive) and make use of our Mountain Collective passes.
We got some nice, typical spring skiing conditions: overnight frozen snow, following the sun as the slopes softened up from east to west to north. Plus Mammoth is so high (peaking at 11,000 ft), it was easy to avoid any sticky slush that would develop lower down.
Click through for the full gallery:
March really came through for snow in Tahoe! We got one storm after another including some nice cold ones for some great light powder days. I also closed on the purchase of a house in Tahoe Vista and with the help of Darlene, Resi, Troy and Aiden, we were able to put it to great use right away! Troy’s brother Rick and his son Grayson also joined us for a few days at the… “Moose Haus”? “Moose Lodge”? Even Pan and Hera came up for a couple of weeks.
Click through for the full gallery of pictures from our five various days of skiing at Homewood over a couple of weeks in mid- to late-March:
Darlene and I joined Resi, Troy and Aiden at Homewood this past weekend to play in the much needed new snow. Click through for the gallery:
Finally got some snow to ski in Tahoe this past week. Chased the storm up with Troy on Thursday night. We had eighteen inches of powder to play with at Homewood, which was nice, but there wasn’t much of a base (like 25″), so still tons of obstacles to watch out for everywhere. Creeks and rocks and trees and those sneaky, ski- and board-eating shrubberies! As a result, lots of terrain wasn’t really accessible and you had to be pretty careful where you went, but there was still plenty of room for fun.
Here’s some pictures and a little video – though I really should’ve recorded some of the obstacle-dodging craziness and the digging of ourselves out of heavy, sun-saturated powder traps!
Darlene and I went down to Pinnacles National Park for dark skies to watch the Geminids meteor shower Wednesday night:
That’s a 20-second time-lapse I made looking south towards Orion about midnight, covering about 90 minutes that didn’t include any light trails from passing airplanes. And here’s a still shot.
