Once again, Tahoe was having a late start to the season with lots of rain and spotty snowfall, in spite of the torrential rains we got in the Bay Area.  So in late November we decided to hedge our Christmas bets by booking a trip to Colorado.  I skied 2 days in early December at Northstar and Heavenly on the few open runs in poor conditions.

We arrived December 19th at 12:30AM and after straightening out a rental car nightmare, we got to bed at 2:30AM.  4-hours later we got up and made our way up to Winter Park for our first new resort of the 2014/15 season.  I lived in Colorado for 8-years, but for some reason I never made it to Winter Park.  We hit it perfectly because they received the most snow in Colorado overnight with 8″ of fresh.

Winter Park winter wonderland

The next 2 days we skied Copper Mountain, which was also a new one on the list that neither of us had ever skied.  A big storm came in on the 2nd day at Copper, with 9″ of new and heavy snow falling all day.  It got very windy at the end of the day, but it was a great powder day.

The last day we checked out of our hotel, dug the car out, and made our way up Loveland pass on I-70 to the Loveland ski resort.  It was a full-on blizzard with super-marginal driving conditions.  The car got stuck trying to get off the freeway into the upper parking lot, so we went down the the Valley parking lot and skied the 14.5″ of overnight fresh before heading back down to Denver to catch our flight home.  Loveland had the largest storm total of any Colorado resort, with 40″, so once again we hit the jackpot, although the wind, cold, and falling snow were brutal to ski in.  They shut the freeway down for several hours right after we made it into the parking lot, so we had the place pretty much to ourselves.

The day after we made it back from Colorado, we headed up to Tahoe with the kids to celebrate Christmas.  Christmas day we skied Kirkwood for the first time this year.  They were 100% open with 4″ of fresh.  It was icy underneath that 4″, so not great but pretty fun nonetheless.  We both tried out our new powder skis (ON3P Billy Goat 186 for me, and Salomon Rockette 115 for AiRung) and were super happy with them.

So as of now, 3 new resorts down, for 40 total, and 5 total days of skiing for AiRung, 7 for me.

– Ron

After 2 weekends of camping with the new truck camper, it was time to get back up to Tahoe to check things and turn on the sprinklers for summer.  Alpine Meadows was still open, so I decided to get one more day in.

Both Summit Six and Roundhouse were open with a lot of bowl terrain and 3 or 4 groomed runs. It was windy and fairly cool, so the snow stayed in good enough shape that I was able to get 20,000 vert in. This brings the total # days this year to 33, beating last year by 1 day. We skied Alpine on Mother’s day a few years ago and there was so much more snow that year. They were reporting a 5″ depth at the base today, which is really hard to argue with since there was a thin path of snow they had to extend a few hundred yards from the bottom of the snow line to get to the lifts. Still, it was fun and definitely worth doing. There are only 11 resorts left open in North America this weekend, and after this weekend it will probably be down to 6.

I did a couple of new reviews recently: Northstar, CA and Palisades Tahoe, CA. Alpine is now owned by Palisades Tahoe, so some day soon they will probably get interconnected and become one area, but for now they are still separate. Alpine is definitely in need of some upgrades — especially the base lodge — so I hope Palisades Tahoe starts spending some money on it soon.

“Two Man Chute” at Kirkwood, April 19, 2014

This was our last weekend of skiing for the 2013/14 season.  I ended up with 32-days and AiRung got 25.  Not too bad for a “bad” snow year because it was actually slightly above average for us, and I could only ski on weekends and on dedicated ski trips due to my job.

The season started off with almost no snow in Tahoe.  By mid February it was snowing again, and that month was the only one with above average snowfall, but much of it fell as rain at lake level so resorts like Northstar, Diamond Peak, and Homewood really suffered.  I looked at the Northstar web cams the other day and they had a couple of narrow strips of snow at the bottom of the mid-mountain base area for people to get back to the lifts.  Kirkwood was the winner again this year with 375″ of snowfall up top and with a base elevation of 7,800 ft most of the storms produced snow down to the base.

Ridge Run at Heavenly, April 20, 2014

We crossed 7 resorts off of the list including Jackson Hole, Grand Targhee, Sun Valley, Snowbird, Brighton, Sundance, and Mt. Rose.  We now have completed 37 of the 100.  At this rate we will complete the project in about 9 years, but we definitely have some work ahead of us to complete it that early because we’ve picked most of the low hanging fruit at this point.  Many of the remaining resorts are far away and difficult to get to.

We will move on to camping and other summer activities now.  We recently sold our travel trailer and picked up a 2013 Arctic Fox 990 truck camper.  This will be used as a base to ski some of the more remote resorts we need to ski.  I plan to do an in-depth review of this setup after we have some experience using it.

I added a couple of new reviews recently: Crystal Mountain, WA and Mt. Bachelor, OR.  I’m going down the list in order and doing resort reports that I have photos of.  There are several places that we have already skied that I have no photos for, and I’m trying to keep this site filled with only photos that I’ve taken.  We’ll try to get back to those so I can take some photos, so those reports will have to wait.

Did this really happen?  A couple of weeks ago we thought the ski season was about over, but better late than never, a series of storms dropped several feet of snow in Tahoe.  We skied both March 29th and 30th at Kirkwood.  Saturday night it snowed 18″ at Kirkwood, and Sunday was the best day of the season.

Palisades at Kirkwood, March 30 2014

As of April 1, 2014, Kirkwood has received 370″ up top, and 258″ at the base.  This is about 70% of the normal snowfall for the year.  Heavenly has received only 176″ which is about 50% of normal.  Kirkwood has been strangely blessed with snowfall compared to most other areas both north and south, so we have spent the majority of our Tahoe ski days there this year.  Sunday was the first time this year I was able to use my K2 Pontoon powder skis.  What a blast!

Palisades at Kirkwood, March 30 2014

I put up a couple of new reviews:  Mt. Rose and Diamond Peak.  These are the 2 Nevada resorts we have on our list.  With Mt. Rose in the bag, we have now completed all the Tahoe resorts. This is definitely the low-hanging fruit since we have a house in South Lake!  We can now rank the Tahoe resorts according to our experiences and preferences:

I have a GoPro now, and was able to put together a short video of some powder shots from Sunday.

Sentinel Bowl at Kirkwood, March 2014

This season has been the worst season for snowfall in Tahoe since the winter of 76/77 so we haven’t been getting as much skiing in as normal.  November, December, and January were much below average snowfall and it didn’t really start snowing until mid February when we had a couple of huge snowfalls and lots of smaller ones.  February was in fact the first month of above average precipitation in Tahoe since December 2012.  Unfortunately, it has also been really warm so there is very little snow below 7,500′.  There is NO snow at our house in Meyers at 6,400′, which is the first time I can remember that happening in early March.

With all this bad snow news, you would think that the skiing has been horrible, but that’s not the case at all.  It was VERY cold in early December so the resorts were able to make a lot of snow.  Early – season we got some great skiing at both Northstar and Heavenly, which both have lots of snowmaking.  Later some small snowfalls kept Kirkwood and the other resorts going with reduced terrain.  The poor snowfall kept the crowds away which was a huge bonus for both skiing and driving.

With the base elevation at Kirkwood being 7,800′, almost all the precipitation that fell in February was snow, and their annual total is now up to 296″ up top (!).  Pretty good for a really bad snow year.  We skied there on Saturday and the mountain was 100% open with great coverage everywhere.  Grooming was excellent early in the day and they had groomed 4 of the steep runs off of chair 6, which is something I have never seen before.  The north-facing upper slopes stayed cold and fluffy, but later in the day it did get a bit slushy at the bottom in the sun.

Sunday at Heavenly was great with awesome grooming and cooler temps due to cloud cover.  There is still great coverage above 8,000 feet, but everything below that is hanging on by a thread.  There is now only one run open down to the bottom of California — East Bowl.  Everything else is bare.  Stagecoach probably has only 1-week left.

We racked up almost 17,000 vertical both days and it was a lot of fun.  Now we head into Spring with even warmer temps so not sure how long this is going to last, but hopefully there will be a couple more storms with cold temps to freshen things up and keep it going through April.

I put up a new review this weekend: Brighton, Utah.  I also changed the rating system after thinking about it for a while.  The ratings are now using only whole numbers from 1-5.  A 1 is basically horrible, 2 is well below average, 3 is average, 4 is well above average, and 5 will be a top 10 resort that is truly special.  I felt that it was too difficult to distinguish between a 4.5 and a 4.6 for example, so this rating system is more clear and usable.

Top of “The Wall” at Kirkwood, March 2014

Snowbird, Feb 22, 2014

Every year for the past 10-years we have made a trip to Park City, UT for up to a week-long stay.  We purchased a timeshare right at the bottom of The Canyons ski resort in 2003, which was the year after the winter olympics were held in Utah.  There are so many fantastic resorts in the area around Park City from Snowbasin in the north to Sundance in the south, and the snow is some of the most consistent anywhere.  We always visit in the 2nd half of February, and in all the years we have been coming the snow has always been good.  We have had as many as 5 powder days during our stay.

We decided to sell our timeshare due to rising maintenance costs and deteriorating service and quality at our timeshare, so this will be the last time here for a while.  Because of that, we decided to check off 3 of the 4 resorts on our list in the area:  Brighton, Snowbird, and Sundance.  We still need to ski Alta, which is one of my favorites.  AiRung somehow never made it even though I’ve been there 3 times.

This brings our total resort count to 36, with 6 new resorts this year.  We had intended to check-off Snowbird last year, but AiRung blew out her ACL the first day of the trip and never made it, so the day at Snowbird was a sort of victory lap for her.  That was a really great day.

We had a couple of inches of powder and snow showers the first day at Brighton, but it looks like it will be dry until Thursday afternoon so no real powder days this year most likely.  We skied Sundance today, which is at a lower elevation, and it was super slushy at the bottom by 2PM.

I’m slowly working on putting up new resort reviews.  The most recent ones were Jackson Hole, and Mammoth.  Of course I’m way behind because we have actually skied 36 resorts but there are only 11 reviews up.  Part of the reason for that is laziness, but part of it is that so far, the only pictures on this site are ones we have taken, and I don’t have any pictures from some of the 36 we skied long ago.  We may have to go back to some of them just to keep the site content original, but we haven’t committed to that yet.

– Ron

After skiing 3 days in Tahoe before and on Christmas day with family, we sent the dogs back with the kids and drove to Jackson, WY as the first leg of a 3 resort trip.  It’s about a 750 mile drive from South Lake Tahoe to Jackson, so it’s a full day.  We were excited when we got to the high country of Wyoming looking at the tall snowbanks along the road — something we haven’t seen yet in Tahoe this year.

Our first day of skiing was at Jackson Hole.  The snow was great and other than the tram, the lines were not bad.  We were expecting the worst due to the holiday and the fact that this was the area of the west with the most snow.  Jackson Hole is an intimidating mountain, but AiRung handled it well and we were able to ski the major highlights in just one day.  It was a rare bluebird day.

The second day was Grand Targhee.  We checked out of our hotel early and drove the 1 1/2 hours from Jackson to Driggs, ID and then back a few miles into Wyoming.  Grand Targhee is a much different place than Jackson Hole with mellower slopes and more snow.  It was snowing lightly that day which was a pleasant change.  We actually took a free mountain tour and had a great time skiing with the guide(s) and group all morning.

After skiing Targhee we drove over to Ketchum, Idaho and the Sun Valley resort.  After the deep snow at Targhee it was a bit of a shock to see the lack of snow in Sun Valley, but it turned out to be a really fun day.  There is a full review here.  I’ll get reviews up of the other 2 soon.

This was a really fun trip, and we managed to knock off 3 resorts from the list, putting us at 33 of the 100.  AiRung’s knee held up well after the surgery, although it was sore at the end of each day.

Now we wait for snow in Tahoe.  The Christmas skiing was pretty bad at Heavenly and Northstar with the ice and crowds.  I don’t think we will do any more skiing up there until more snow falls.  Let’s hope that’s soon!

Jackson Hole

We didn’t make it up over Thanksgiving this year due to family stuff in the Bay Area so this weekend was our first skiing of the season.  Luckily we hit pay dirt with the first day being a big snow day.  We ended up with about 20″ at the house, and 30″ at the top of Heavenly.  There was a HUGE line at the Gondola (or “Gondanola” as we heard some first-time snowboarder call it!) on Saturday morning because they didn’t open until 10AM due to wind, and the Gondola was the only way to get up on the mountain.  We didn’t take our first turns until 11:50AM.  With only 4 runs open, long lines, and a temperature of about 5 degrees and strong winds, we only stayed for a couple of hours.  This was the scene on the Comet run just after it opened for the first time this season.  You would have thought it was the first day Mott was opening if you didn’t know better!

Comet 12/7/2013

Sunday was better with sunshine and nicely groomed runs (still just 4), but it was chilly down below with -10F at our house when we got up.

Sea of clouds over Nevada

The snow guns were going on Olympic and Ridge Run in California, so there should be more new terrain opening next weekend.  Unfortunately doesn’t look like any new snow is on the horizon.

There is a new review up today:  Sugar Bowl, CA.  Cheers and have a great season!

Last weekend was my last ski weekend of the year.  Heavenly had closed, so I spent both days at Kirkwood.  Tyler joined me on Sunday for closing day.  It was in the mid-50’s both days, so conditions got predictably slushy by noon, but I still managed a lot of vertical by doing 9-minute laps on Chair 6 with a few Chair 11’s thrown in for a break.  Everything else worth skiing was closed for the season, although coverage was still 100%.  It was a great last hurrah for the season, but I don’t think it’s going to keep me happy all the way until next November!

Sentinel Bowl at Kirkwood April 21, 2013

Total days this season were 32 for me and about 18 for AiRung before she got injured.  We will now switch over to camping and hiking with the dogs until the resorts open again next November.

I just put up a new review of Breckenridge, Colorado.

– Ron

Had a nice day at Kirkwood on Sunday, March 31st. I spent the whole day on chair 6/7 lapping the Sentinels and Palasades areas. I just kept traversing farther and farther over each run so I was able to get sections of untouched powder all day. It was fairly warm, but surprisingly skiable even with the heavy powder.

Kirkwood March 31, 2013

I added a new review for — what else — Kirkwood!

There are only 2 weekends left for Heavenly. Not sure how late Kirkwood will stay open, but I plan to ski as long as possible to make the summer as short as possible!

– Ron