| I had never been to Kirkwood before. It is some distance from South
Lake Tahoe and chains are frequently required to cross the pass to get
there.
This time the skiing conditions were reported to be good and the roads were clear, so for what turned out to be my last day of skiing in the 1999/2000 season, I decided to try Kirkwood for the first time. There was plenty of snow to be seen on the way. Snow banks up to six feet high defined the edges of the road. |
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Hiring skis was a rather time consuming business. The first place I
went did not have any in the size I wanted and the second place took a
great deal of time, even though there were very few people around.
The bowl directly above the resort center was in shadow, so I headed off to the East facing slopes in the area called Sunrise. This meant The Reut and Caples Crest Traverse and then Caples Crest lift. |
| The trail under Iron Horse lift, Herringbone Straight was really crisp, but I took the wrong turn and my only option was to take the lift and another similar run. |
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Finally, I made it to Sunrise lift, a high speed quad lift
going high into the East facing Sunrise bowl.
There was a ski patrol station above the top of the lift, complete with extremely enthusiastic dogs playing in the snow. There was a variety of skiing, with two main groomed tracks, one each side of the lift, with an ungroomed area between them and on either side. To the left of the lift, the Wave had a seriously steep cornice at the top. To the right of the lift, Hully Gully, Cold Shoulder and Larry's Lip effectively formed a large open bowl. For the first few runs, only the groomed runs were skiable. The ungroomed areas were still frozen hard into crud. |
| Four varied runs and it was time to stop for a drink at the open air refreshment area at the bottom of the lift. The crowds gradually built up, but there was never more than a couple of minutes queue before the next run. |
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The views from Sunrise Bowl were magnificent. Beyond the lift and the
ski area boundary there were more snow covered mountains. In the other
direction there was the base area and frozen lake used for cross country
and dog-sledding.
After the break, the snow was softening nicely and more or less all of the bowl was nicely skiable. The only area I actually steered clear of was the cornice above The Wave. All morning, I got closer and closer to the runs down from Larry's Lip, all of which looked seriously steep. I was tempted but kept clear. |
| In the late morning, there was the sound of a helicopter in the air. Initially, I thought there must have been an accident, but when I looked more closely, the helicopter was depositing skiers at the top of Thimble Peak for an extreme skiing competition through an area marked as out-of-bounds on the trail map, and then following them down the mountain with a film crew. |
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As the end of the morning approached, I took a closer look at the runs
from Larry's Lip (this was a bit risky, because if I decided not to take
the run, I would have to climb back up to go down the easier side of the
ridge).
Thunder Saddle looked OK, so I started down. It was a little steep and narrow in parts, but I took it slowly and didn't have any real problem until half way down where the trail was closed because the extreme skiing run crossed it and people were queuing to get down. The alternative was the double-black diamond, Two Man Chute. I didn't want to wait, so that was the option. From the top it looked steep and narrow, but not too long and the snow was nicely mogulled to stop and fall turning into a long slide. It turned out to be a fitting last run of the season, plenty of challenge, but I got down safely without falling. |
| And so, there didn't really seem any point in trying to follow Two
Man Chute, so I skied down to the bottom and finished for
the day (and as it turned out for the 1999/2000 season).
Kirkwood is a very impressive resort. I will have to go back there sometime. |
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Finally, on the way out of the resort, I stopped at a rather warm and stuffy public phone box to call Sue and then set off between the snow banks back towards Menlo Park. |
