Our annual week of skiing and board gaming didn’t happen last year but we did manage to get together this year in Utah. Bill, Kat, Jon, Stan, Tom and I all hit up Alta, Snowbird and Solitude over five days. We had plenty of snow and a few extra inches here and there over the course of the week. We also got in plenty of gaming: Diamant, Sushi Go Party, Bang!, Slide 5, Decrypto, Cheaty Mages, Codenames: Pictures, Ricochet Robot, Cutthroat Caverns and a partial game of Fury of Dracula.
Three weeks into February and Lake Tahoe ski resorts have already received record snowfall for the month: Squaw Valley got over 21 feet this month so far and nearly 43 feet for the season, and Homewood even more at 23 feet for the month.
Crazy! As in awesome fun! Well, except when the roads are closed due to nasty, accident-prone weather conditions – we spent one Saturday night trying to get back to the house in Tahoe Vista from Homewood. First the lake road was closed due to numerous accidents and when we finally tried to take the long way around via Truckee (and through some crazy whiteout conditions across the meadow below Northstar), they ended up closing Brockway Summit. After taking a break in Truckee for dinner and going back around through Tahoe City, we finally made it back to the house by 10 pm – maybe only barely before the unplowed snow on Regency Way got too deep for us to pass.
Three bountiful feet of snow overnight and many resorts had trouble opening for Sunday morning. (Squaw and Alpine didn’t and Homewood was overwhelmed with people and only one chair lift they could run.) That pattern of three feet of new snow repeated again and again over the month.
Short video montage at Homewood, Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows over February.
I went up to Tahoe last week (Monday through Friday) to catch a series of storms. Monday night delivered a couple of inches on top of the old frozen stuff. That made for some very rough and bumpy rides off of the groomed runs on Tuesday. However, then we got a couple of feet Tuesday night but Wednesday was windy and gusting enough to keep the upper mountain from opening at Squaw or Alpine and eventually even closed the mid-mountain lift by noon at Alpine. It was super wet and heavy snow too and way too tiring after the previous day so I bailed mid-day. Resi, Troy and Aiden came up Wednesday afternoon and we got another couple of feet overnight. Thursday proved to be fantastic and Troy and I spent all day making fresh tracks at Homewood until they started closing all the lifts on us. Sheesh! They stayed for another day but I had to head home to prep for the weekend.
We stayed up in Tahoe for a week and a half up to Christmas and got in a few half days of skiing at Homewood. Not a lot of snow yet, but skiable. Christmas Eve day was mostly rain, but it eventually turned cold enough to get some new snow for Christmas Day.
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.
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:
