Darlene and I headed back up to Tahoe at the end of February to meet up with Jon, Stan and Bill for our annual weeklong group ski trip. Storm after storm is continuing to dump massive amounts of snow in the Sierra Nevada – 53 feet over the season at Palisades so far.  We were able to come up in a slight break in the back-to-back storms hitting Tahoe (and all of California), but we had to take the long way out because highway 17 (through the low elevation, coastal Santa Cruz mountains) was actually closed due to snow – a very rare occurrence.

There were travel troubles all around with Jon’s flight cancelled and Stan coming up early to try to beat the storm.  We were joined by Resi and Aiden on Saturday before they had to rush back ahead of the next incoming storm.  We spend the day trying to clear some of the snow and ice from the deck, roof and stairs.  So much ice keeps building up on the deck and the stairs below from the ice-melting heat trace on the roof above – it actually was overflowing the threshold of the sliding doors below, freezing them in place and leaking water into the house.

Geof and Jennifer were also able to come up and stay for the week through the storms.  Unfortunately, Geof got seriously ill and ended up quarantined in a room for much of the week.  But then even the resorts had difficulties: closing early Monday, remaining closed Tuesday and only partially open the following day due to the massive amounts of new snow in such a short period. We did still manage to get multiple days of skiing in over our stay.

I joined Troy at Homewood on Sunday and then Jon, Stan and Bill at Northstar on Monday (until they closed early).  The resorts remained closed Tuesday and were still trying to dig out on Wednesday when I joined Troy again for the one lift that Homewood was able to get running.  Darlene joined me, Jon, Stan and Bill at Alpine and Palisades for much of Thursday and Friday, while Geof and Jennifer hit up the same resorts separately and Kat joined us for board gaming Friday night.  Darlene and I returned to Palisades and Northstar the following Monday and Tuesday before we had to make our way home again ahead of the next wave of storms – this time bringing warm temps and rain.

There’s something like over 10 feet of ice and compacted snow on the roof right now.  Hopefully it will sustain the load and the incoming heavy snow and rain until our roof is scheduled to get at least partially cleared of snow late next week!

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