Freshly back from my whirlwind (depending on how you look at it, there was quite a bit of driving involved) tour of the southwest, I got back to San Francisco just in time for the parents to get to town. After a few days in the city, we made the trek up to Tahoe so that Herb could get some skiing in, with me providing as much instruction as possible considering I don’t know how to ski. My hope was that I could at least convey some knowledge about how snow works, since that was one of the things that was hard for me to figure out when I was learning to snowboard. That makes sense if you consider the most snow I had ever seen in my life was the “blizzard” of 1993 when Atlanta got 6″. Now granted, that is a lot of snow for the South, but it’s still not the same as a 100″ base.

Herb got a little bit of a slow start, but after a few runs he was looking pretty good. I was able to practice riding fakie (and was reminded why learning to snowboard sucks every time I caught an edge), and over all it was a good day with perfect weather. The downside is that we neglected to put on sunscreen, so there was a little bit of burning, and the snow was so deep I hit the top of a metal fence (6ft? 8ft) and put what I assume to be a fatal gouge in the Malolo.

Even though there was a ton of snow on the ground, I felt like this could be my last day of real riding in Tahoe, so it was nice to get up there. We finished up, met Sally at the base of the Tram, then busted it back to the city to eat dinner with Reagan, Matt and Sara, which made for a nice finish to the day.

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I woke up in the morning ready to get on the mountain, but unfortunately I had some work to take care of, specifically a conference call, which ended up getting canceled a half hour before it started. What can ya do. I busted over to the resort and jumped on the gondola. I took some video, which I later accidentally deleted before it was uploaded anywhere. The saga of deleted or never recorded film continues.

Because I got a late start, a lot of the snow in the main areas was already pretty beat up. I amused myself by doing some hikes in the trees by Chairs 12, 13 and 14, and found some pretty good stuff. It was surprisingly steep and untouched, but mostly because you had a hike, then lost a lot of vertical to get there. To finish up the day I hiked a peak I saw people going up last year, but was too chicken to follow. This year I hoofed it to the top, strapped in, and cruised down, jumping over rollers along the way.

Highway 395 goes right past Mono Lake, and I figured if I was out here, I might as well stop. I learned that the Tufa are fossilized springs, and that Mono Lake is the sister lake of the Great Salt Lake. Both have similar problems as many other inland seas – too much water being diverted elsewhere for drinking and irrigation. They are “trying” to fix it, but so far, no dice. The sky looked cool, as well as the Tufa formations, so I was glad I stopped to check it out.

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Sure enough the weather didn’t blow out, and it kept dumping snow all day. We opted in to the cat skiing once again, and did have a little bit better visibility at times to hit some pretty fun stuff about mid way up. Again we got to ski family style, and by now the snow had gotten pretty deep, well over 2 feet. Justin and I rode together a good amount again, and got to jump around in the trees (I stuck with the Malolo for a second day). I had a couple decent wipe outs going off cliffs, cornices, whatever, and was starting to think that there were no downhill landings in Alaska. I finally spotted a good drop from the bottom of the run, and Justin and I asked to do it again, and Rhett obliged. True to form, I came at it pretty fast and hear the beep-beep-beep of the helmet cam indicating that the battery has died about 10m short of the drop – which I then went off of pretty big, landed it and went tearing down the mountain. Of course, none of it was recorded, so…. I tried again and wasn’t able to land it the second time, since fog must have blown in and I didn’t even see it coming before I fell off. C’est la vie.

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We woke up Saturday morning to a full on blizzard, but decided to head out to the helipad anyway and get in some cat skiing – we were in Alaska after all, and who were we to complain about a powder day, albeit one with pretty limited visibility. The day started a little rough, but once we went lower and got into the trees, it was actually pretty fun. We got to ride together in a group as the avalanche danger was less on the lower aspects, and the trees made it even safer. I took out the Burton Malolo 158, and it proved to be pretty fun and easy to navigate in the trees. We had to weigh in for the heli, so I know I was carrying 45lbs of gear, and the heavy snow did get a bit tiring, especially after hitting it decently hard the day before. I met a guy from Anchorage who’s name was also Justin, and he was on a Fish X, which also seemed to be pretty fun as the snow got deeper. I know I was bailed out more than once by the nose. We did about 11,000 feet of vert, and only got charged for 10k, so it wasn’t such a bad day when all was said and done.

The snow hadn’t let up when we were having dinner (which was actually really good, and definitely the best I’ve ever had skiing), so we weren’t all that hopeful for a fly day, but went to bed with our fingers crossed.

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