Northstar-at-Tahoe
Sunday 11 January 1998

Weather

Light snow at first getting progressively heavier as a winter storm came in.

Conditions

The falling snow defeated the grooming machines. Ven those most recently groomed has about 4 inches of fresh heavy snow on top. On the backside, there was 6-9 inches of heavy powder on all the runs.

Overall

Take your daughter to the slopes day!

An even better day.

Northstar seems a very customer oriented resort. They allowed me to trade-in my one day ticket for a two-day ticket, saving $10 and then located the camera I left on the gondola within about 10 minutes and returned it to me personally.

There had been quite a lot of snow overnight, particularly on the backside. I took one run off Comstock waiting for the backside to open. I intended to take an easy run first, but the completely untracked "powder" on Burn out proved irresistable and very challenging.

Wet powder on burnout!

I thought that Follow-Me was groomed, but got that pretty wrong. It was steep mogulled and with plenty of fresh snow on the top. About half way down, my goggles and glasses fogged up and I had real difficulty seeing, eventually giving up on the glasses completely!

By the time I got to the top, it was almost 10am, so I signed up for another free lesson. This time it turned out to be a level 9 group, and all three of us wanted to know how to handle the fresh snow better.

Jane, our instructor, started us off on Iron Horse, nominally groomed, but with quite a lot of fresh snow. She focussed on the need for equal weighting in powder and crud, the need for very positive upweigting on the turns and the use of the upper body to help keep facing in the correct direction.

On our second run, we started down Burn Out but about half way down, Jane suggested that we turn off into the trees. We were a little bit tentative .. In places, the snow was quite deep and largely untracked. But, it worked and we coped relatively comfortably with a variety of terrain through comfortably spaced trees.

For the final run of the lesson, we went straight into the trees from the top. We all fell, including the instructor, but by the bottom had the most wonderful sense of achievement (and almost completely work out legs).

I tried a couple of runs after lunch, but the legs were too tired and I have a slight strain in one knee, so decided to call it a day before the bad habits returned.

Blowing snow coats the North side of the poles in Tahoe City	The swimming pool at the Peppertree .. Closed for the winter
Another wintry scene at Tahoe City	Snow on the tree near the lift shaft of the Peppertree

Vertical (feet)

16535

Runs

Lift	Vertical	Easy Runs	Intermediate Runs	Advanced Runs
Big Springs	480
Arrow	535
Comstock	1250		West Ridge, Cascades	Stump Alley
Comstock	1250			Burnout
Backside	1860			Lower Burnout, Challenger, Follow-Me
Backside	1860
Break
			West Ridge	Iron Horse
Backside	1860			Burnout, Trees
Backside	1860			Down Under, Trees, Lower Burnout
Backside	1860
Lunch Break
				Lower Burnout, Challenger
Backside	1860			Polaris
Backside	1860	Lumberjack, Main Street, Village Run		Crosscut, East Ridge
Total vertical	16535