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When I booked this trip to Lake Tahoe, three
weeks in advance, there was no snow on the ground. I was expecting a few
short runs with machine made snow just to warm up my legs for the new
season of skiing.
During the previous week, there was a severe winter storm, leaving between 4 and 8 FEET of snow at the ski resorts. This was evident when I arrived at the Peppertree Hotel on Friday afternoon. All around there was evidence of the best early season snow in years. |
| The sun was just coming up when I left the hotel. It was cold and calm, with few clouds in the sky. Perfect skiing conditions. |
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The welcome from the Northstar Bear was in
strict contrast to the welcome from the staff at the base level. The
people directing traffic didn't look as if they could be bothered and
ski rental was chaotic, taking almost 30 minutes to hire skis without
boots.
They don't seem to have got the bugs out of the computer system installed a year earlier. The snow conditions were great. As can be seen from the bear at the top of Big Springs Gondola, there was a lot of recent snow still in evidence. |
| I started the day with some worries about whether I was sufficiently fit to ski. The first strategy was just to know up a reasonable amount of vertical, just on groomed slopes. After a quick run down Main Street from Arrow lift, I went up Vista Express to fit in another short warm up run before heading for the summit. |
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The early morning view from the Summit was
wonderful. Down in the valley there was a temperature inversion leaving
a layer of mist over the airport.
West Ridge was groomed, and so for the first time in my experience was the steep run just to the West of the lift, The Plunge. Back up Comstock and I headed for the back side, via the beautifully groomed Iron Horse. My plan was to stick to groomed runs. I thought Rail Splitter had been groomed. I was wrong and my plan for the day changed. Rail Splitter had been groomed, but a day or so earlier. The surface was kicked up and needed to be skied properly. The line between piles of snow was slick, the piles of snow themselves were quite heavy. |
| I stopped briefly at the Summit for the rest
room and for a drink of water, and to check on which runs were groomed.
The next run Promised Land was immaculate; freshly groomed overnight. Getting to the top of the run, I had to pass the top of Polaris, which looked mogulled. On Backside Express, I tried to look across to the run through the trees and it did not look too bad at the bottom, so ignoring the plan to keep to groomed runs I plunged into the moguls at the top of Polaris. In fact the further down the slope I got, the easier the skiing became. The bumps at the top were very soft and just helped turns rather than catching skis. |
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I decided on one easy run before a coffee
break, so headed for Burn Out, which is ALWAYS groomed.
Not today! Like Polaris and Rail Splitter, Burn Out had the effects of at least one day of skiing since grooming. It was in fact a great run, with some terrain to ski. Back up to the top of Backside Express lift and I stopped for coffee and a phone call home. |
| After coffee I headed for a run I knew was
freshly groomed, Sierra Grande. It may have been groomed
at the start of the day; the effects had worn off. It was a good run,
but not particularly smooth.
Next run I headed further towards the North East of the resort and Challenger run. Again, a lot of soft, quite heavy snow, on top of the run meant that there was no evidence of grooming. Stopping to take photos of the views to Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows gave me valuable recovery time. The short Follow Me run was perhaps the best of the day, with soft snow on the short steep central section. The long looping Challenger run itself was pretty horrible. There is a flatish section in the middle which was more or less crud, and the run out at the bottom involved poleing. I decided to complete the set by trying the moguls on The Rapids under the lift. This was a mistake, my legs were too tired and I really didn't ski the run very well at all. Before finishing I took one last Backside run, another run down Iron Horse. This was no longer well groomed, but was still an easy run. |
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I headed back to the bottom via East
Ridge, with its view towards the lake, and the short drop down Powder
Bowl, which lived up to its name.
At mid mountain, I decided to take one last lift, Vista Express, so that I could take The Woods down to the base area. Logger's Loop was fine, but The Woods was closed, so it was the usual Village Run after all. |
| By the end of the day, I had clocked up
24500' of vertical, much of it on ungroomed slopes. The sessions on the
Nordic Track were worth it after all.
Back at the hotel, conditions were much the same as on the previous day. |
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| Lift | Vertical | Easy Runs | Intermediate Runs | Advanced Runs |
| Big Springs | 480 | |||
| Arrow | 535 | Main Street | Upper Main Street | |
| Vista | 1173 | Lumberjack | Magic Moguls | |
| Comstock | 1250 | Cascades | The Plunge | |
| Comstock | 1250 | West Ridge | Iron Horse | |
| Backside | 1860 | Rail Splitter, Down Under | ||
| Backside | 1860 | Promised Land, Iron Horse | ||
| Backside | 1860 | Polaris | ||
| Backside | 1860 | Burnout, Lower Burnout | ||
| Backside | 1860 | |||
| Coffee break | ||||
| Sierra Grande, Lower Burnout | ||||
| Backside | 1860 | Challenger, Follow Me, Lower Burnout | ||
| Backside | 1860 | Down Under, Challenger | ||
| Backside | 1860 | Lower Burnout, The Rapids, Back Door | ||
| Backside | 1860 | West Ridge | Iron Horse | |
| Backside | 1860 | Lumberjack, Main Street | Powder Bowl | East Ridge, Powder Bowl |
| Vista | 1173 | Village Run | Logger's Loop | |
| Total vertical | 24461 |
Last updated: 8/12/2001
