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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I tried to leave Tahoe and get back to San Francisco, but after it took me 2 hours to get to and sit in Truckee, the road finally just shut down and I was stuck. It didn’t make sense to just hang out, and after I confirmed that Steve was headed up to Squaw that night, I backtracked to the house to spend the night.

I woke up relatively early and headed over to Squaw, and Steve was nice enough to provide a free lift ticket. Slow going in the Special Tickets line made me miss first chair, but I still managed to get out pretty early. The snow was a little beat up over Friday, but there was more on top and overall really good. We mostly stuck to Red Dog before dipping over and poaching Squaw Creek… and we weren’t the only ones. My video taking was pretty weak, and I was mostly just trying to get in as many laps as I could before I had to leave. These are a few of the Squaw Creek runs, with Red Dog Ridge at the end. The bus back from Squaw Creek had something like 25 people on it, and I want to say the capacity was 14. Overcrowded would be a good description, but again, it was worth it. I had to take off just after noon to head back to the City, but not bad to get another sweet powder day so late in the season.

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I got home on Monday night from Andy’s wedding in Atlanta, and was tracking what looked like it could be a decent storm, despite the fact that it was April 26th. Sure enough, the 6″ they were expecting turned into a foot, and then they got another foot and a half on top of that for 29″ total. I played around with some different camera mounts – on the nose of the board (I was on the Neversummer Summit 169, so the nose was way out there), on a trekking pole on the front of the board, on my pack, and hand held – all to varying degrees of success. I think this was my most successful video editing to date, I managed to get the action mostly synced to the music, and the jerky nature of it kinda fits with the banghra/hip hop. Threw a cartoon filter on it, and bam! it looks kind of like a video game.

The snow was great – light and fluffy, and even a little soft underneath – so Javier and I had a pretty good day overall. I tried to get home, but it was still dumping and 80 ended up getting closed in Truckee. It took me nearly 2 hours to get to there, so I just turned around and headed back to the house to get in one more day.

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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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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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Went to Squaw Valley with Jimmy and Adam, and for some reason we started out the day by hitting Silverado. The snow wasn’t all that great, and the result was mainly cramping. A few down Shirley Lake, and then we met up with Nichole and a few of her friends.

Overall the day itself wasn’t good snow wise, but we hung out at the Space Cowboys Snowfest party on the deck for a bit, had a few beers, and made the best of the day.

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The fireplace in the Nelson house – Agate Bay, Lake Tahoe, CA 2007

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