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Well, it turns out there was another Tahoe snowboarding to be had after all. Keeping with the weather that we have been getting in all season, it decided to snow over 2 feet throughout the week, and Javier sent me a text, and the trip was on.

The intention was to arrive pretty early, with Javier joining from Sacramento, but for some reason my alarm clock just didn’t go off (I did confirm that it was still on and set to the proper time), so I ended up leaving at 8:30 instead of 6:30, which totally sucked. By the time I got there and started hiking, Javier had already done a lap on Yellow Chair, but I managed to make pretty decent time. There weren’t too many people there, and of those most seemed to be on sleds, but fresh lines were everywhere

We decided to go up the bunny slope past Yellow Chair, then loop around underneath Keyhole and up to the summit through Alpine Bowl. It was definitely slower going for me on the snowshoes than it was for Javier with skins (I dropped off the split a week before assuming winter was over), and I forgot the trekking poles in the car, but who am I to complain? It wasn’t warm, but a tshirt was all that was needed on the way up, but the breeze necessitated a jacket on the way down. I hiked all the way to the peak to jump off the cornice, but the first attempt was really weak as I lost all my speed on the flat section. A little frustrated, I decided to do it again, and this time I really tried to bomb it and hit the cornice earlier to preserve as much speed as possible. It was a lot better, but…. would have been nice to be able to get more distance. The snow was actually pretty awesome, and even though we only ended up doing one run, I was glad I made the trip, despite the late start.

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Really cold weather lead to some really light powder, and 19″ of it, so Andy and I headed to Alpine Meadows. We met up with Zachary shortly after, and then Jay and Reagan later in the day. I knew it was going to be a good day when you could hear the bombs going off in all the bowls and in Promised Land.

I tried to put together some of the video of the day, and while it’s still a little lame, it might be the best editing to date.

We hit Pete’s Peril first, then moved on to Scott, first the Chute then Promised Land once we met up with Zach. As things got more tracked out, we did a bit of hiking, starting with High Traverse into Sherwood, then behind Idiot’s to the top of Beaver Bowl. We got great snow they whole day, but the snow in Beaver was especially good.

Wrapped it up with beers on the deck, not so bad.

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There’s starting to be a theme, as this is my 8th day at Alpine Meadows this year, and if you count Homewood, it’s the 11th between the two. Probably a strong argument to get a season pass next year.

I was settled in to get some work done, and even managed to get all necessary meetings taken care of. Luckily most of the work isn’t pressing, so when Javier gave me a call on Wednesday about a freakish temperature drop down to 9 degrees and a subsequent 30″ dump of snow, the decision wasn’t too hard. Ideally I would have been able to make the drive that evening, but I was super tired, and was having dinner with Hank, so I braved the 4:30am wake up, and made the long haul in the morning. Traffic was surprisingly heavy on 89 towards Tahoe City, especially if you were going to be making the turn towards Squaw.

Things got a bit lighter at Alpine, but by no means was it a typical mid-week day – people were definitely out getting turns. Javier arrived before I did, and although I was doing what I could to get on the slopes as fast as possible, the world was conspiring against me. As I tightened up my left boot, the upper lace broke (again), pretty much putting me out of commission. Luckily I travel with duct tape, so I yanked it down and ran around the top a few times, actually managing to get things pretty tight. Too tight I found out later when my toes went numb, but nothing to be done about that.

We did a few laps on Summit Six before heading to Scott, then eventually to the backside. Notably, I completely bailed on the cliff off the chute skier’s right of D-8, but got some nice shots of Javier coming down, as you can see. Promised Land was pretty sick, and there were lots of drops and untracked powder to be had all day. All in all a rousing success.

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Weather forecasts showed some pretty intense precipitation coming in off the Pacific – an El Nino system from the south, which meant that temperatures could be on the warm side. We crossed our fingers, and Jay and I beat the storm by making the drive on Thursday, and then worked from home on Friday when it turned out to be rain, pretty much all day. The main excitement came from having some guys come by to check out the cornice hanging off our roof over the deck. Once it was determined to be a rather large hazard, he almost tried to jump out of a window onto the roof, which I’m pretty sure would have resulted in death. He thought better of it and they ended up going to get a ladder. It made a spectacular crash coming down.

Things turned over around 6 in the evening, and it was snowing pretty hard by the time most people arrived at the house. I heard from someone on a lift that their friends had left San Francisco at 6pm, and hadn’t arrived until 4am due to I-80 being closed near Colfax. We did what you do on a powder day, and everyone was in bed by 11:30.

We woke up to a report of 12″+ at Alpine, so we got over there and onto the mountain as close to 9 as we could. Andy and I went to do a few laps on Summit Six, and the visibility was some of the worst I’ve ever seen on Ward Peak. Literally 10ft, and the flattest light there can be. Andy ended up riding up the berm at above Wolverine Bowl, and I wouldn’t have seen it coming either if not for Andy’s bright ass new pants. We eventually rode down blind until it cleared, then opened it up on the powder. Andy had a nice line into a bomb crater, followed by two full somersaults, before riding out of it. More runs through Promised Land gave way to untracked powder late into the morning where we met up with Che and Roger, and by the time afternoon rolled around we were pretty spent. Sherwood runs and relaxing at the Ice Bar fit the bill, and we met up with Jay, who was also pretty exhausted.

We grabbed a few beers at the lodge, then headed back to the house for the hot tub, two more losses for Andy at spades, and then a deep sleep.

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A day at Alpine with Scott, Adam, Chico, Andy, Jay and Reagan.

Friday was tiring, but that didn’t stop us from getting back out on the mountain at Alpine on Saturday, with a bit of fresh to be had. Definitely some work to move through, and some firmer areas than you would like to see, but not much to complain about either. We moved around the whole mountain – Scott Chair to Promised Land, Roundhouse up to Yellow Chair, Sherwood on the backside and over Expert Shortcut (resulting in a near collision between Scott and I, seen above, which is what you get when someone who rides regular comes back to back with someone who rides goofy), but a lot of our time was spent in Beaver Bowl. To end out the day I decided to push on over to Estelle Bowl, but being the only boarder who had attempted it, as evidenced by the lack of footprints and the uphill traverse, I ended up going all the way to Bernie’s before being able to drop in. The reward for the 45 minute hike was worth it though, and I had fresh tracks in knee to waist deep snow the whole way down.

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I drove up to Tahoe super super late on Thursday night after dinner with Reagan, Deb and Kyle as Sushi Bistro. I actually even arrived late there, since I had to drive up to DemoSport in San Rafael first, and of course the traffic was horrendous with the rain. I didn’t even leave until 11:45, then had to plow through unplowed roads to drop of bindings for Dan in Tahoe Donner before heading to the house. I didn’t lay down until nearly 4am (after putting some laundry on), and yet still managed to get up at 9am, and out on the hill by 10. The call was for Alpine, since that’s where Andy, Javier, Adam, and Scott were riding, and it ended up being a really fun day. Dropped a decent number of small cliffs – it was the first time I really felt like things were getting covered completely.

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We woke up early to a full 60″ of fresh powder at Alpine Meadows. After the requisite coffee (and not as requisite food), we headed over to the mountain. Apparently the road had been closed until right before we got there due to avalanche danger, but Chico, Andy, Scott, Jimmy and I made it up on the mountain by 9:30. It could have been a lot faster, but we had to deal with some super slow ticket sales… We started on Summit, did a hike to the Saddle – I ultimately went a bit further than everyone else and ended up doing Keyhole. The view from the top was pretty awesome, and after navigating a bit of bomb debris, I got to have first tracks down the mountain, although there were probably only 3 on the face. I caught up to everyone else doing the Roundhouse-Yellow-Scott-Promised Land loop, and we just kept doing laps all day (with the exception of a trip to Sherwood and Expert Shortcut. One by one people dropped out until it was just Scott and and I, and I swear the conditions just got better and better all day, though the wind picked up significantly by 1:00 and it was dropping quite a bit of snow.

Jimmy had to leave early, so I piled in the car with everyone else. It was pretty shocking to get back to the car to find about a foot of snow sitting on it, considering the conditions had been super nice when we got there in the morning. Overall we put in about 6 hours, and according to Chico’s heart rate monitor, about 2500 calories.

Here is some fancy iMovie work of Chico riding down through Promised Land.

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The first storm of the week long set came in on Sunday night, and by morning there was 7″-9″ at Alpine Meadows. Everyone else in the house (Matt, Allyson, Reagan, Chico, Michelle, and Josh) took off back to the city to try and beat the intense part of the store, while Andy, Che, Carolina and I made our way over to the resort and got there around 10:30am after a stop at Gear and Grind. We started out on Summit Six  and while the conditions were not too bad, it was pretty limited in terms of visibility, and with the snow dumping we only did one run from the top – after that it was all Roundhouse -> Yellow Chair -> Scott Chair -> Promised Land laps. Javier arrived late, and we met up with him at the base of Scott, and then stuck together for some really good riding once the tracks had filled in and traffic had cleared out. It was a nice feeling to be some of the better riders on the mountain, and we really charged it for a while – trees, cornices, anything we could find. They closed down Scott around 1:30 for wind (right after we found some pretty epic untracked powder in the trees off to the side of Scott Chute, and by 2:00 pretty much everything had been shut down.

While there were some pretty strong gusts, the closures were likely due to the whiteout conditions as much as anything else. At times you could only see about 20 ft it was coming down so hard, and combined with snow caked goggles it was basically impossible to see. We ended up back at the lodge for a beer before finding a foot of snow on the car (and nearly a quarter inch inside the car while we took off our gear) before heading back to the house to wait on the rest of the dump we should get tonight.

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