Skiing

The winter of 2013 started off well for skiers on the West Coast. A wet November dumped plenty of snow to get some skiing in over Thanksgiving, and an even better December made conditions around the holiday season and New Year’s excellent. Unfortunately, those first two months of the season were followed by the driest January on record and an equally uninspiring first half of February. When I went to Kirkwood over Presidents Day weekend, it hadn’t snowed much at all in almost six weeks. Still, the groomed runs were in decent shape, but the off-piste conditions were terrible.

One of the most popular winter activities in Yosemite National Park is skiing or snowshoeing Glacier Point Road. The road is closed to cars in winter beyond the Badger Pass Ski Resort, but most of the road is groomed, making the 10.3 mile road a relatively easy ski route. The reward is a spectacular view of Yosemite Valley.

We drove to Yosemite on a Saturday morning. About ten inches of snow had fallen over the previous two days, which meant fresh powder for us but did not bode well for road conditions. Sure enough, the infrequently-plowed roads in the park required chains. We reached Badger Pass before noon, got a back country permit, divvyed up food and gear, and strapped on our skis.

The winter retreat for the Stanford Outdoor Education Program instructors was a back country skiing trip off of Highway 88 near Kirkwood Mountain Resort. We left campus early on a beautiful Saturday morning. Despite a flat tire in Jackson, we managed to make it to Tragedy Springs Road, of which only the first hundred feet or so had been plowed. We parked in the plowed area and distributed group gear and food. Then we strapped on our skis and went on our way.

I managed to sneak five days of skiing in before New Years during the 2007 – 2008 season. After an usually low snow year for 2006-2007, it was encouraging that Tahoe got several feet of snow before Christmas. Despite this early snowfall, all of the Tahoe ski areas suffered from the usual early season low coverage with lots of exposed rocks.

My first day of skiing was at Sugar Bowl, on the Saturday after the season’s first big winter storm. I didn’t get to lay any fresh tracks, but there were several chutes that had retained nice powder stashes. The best skiing was off of the Disney Express chair. I explored Nancy’s Couloir, which flowed down from a wind-blown ridge. At the top of the ridge, the wind had exposed several large rocks, so I had to carefully navigate a path between the cliffs. Below the rocks, the snow was great.

A longtime alpine skier, I was roughly introduced to the back country version of that sport one weekend during April of 2007. I was a student in Stanford’s Outdoor Education Program, and I was excited to venture into Tahoe National Forest with eight other students and two instructors. We met to organize our gear on Friday the thirteenth late in the afternoon. After testing stoves, pitching tents, and checking out gear, we threw our packs and skis into a large SUV and a monstrous pickup truck and hit the road.

We began the drive to Northstar around three P.M. on January 4. As soon as we hit 4500′, it suddenly started snowing heavily. Millions of giant snowflakes extinguished visibility and blanketed the road. I took the wheel from Kayleigh, and slowly drove the Ford Escape over the white highway. When we finally reached Kayleigh’s cabin at Northstar, we knew the heavy snow meant we were in for an awesome first day.

Kirkwood is my favorite resort in Tahoe. It’s small, out of the way, and less crowded than almost any other resort in the area. It also gets the most snow of anywhere in the lower 48. With 7800′ base, it snows top to bottom at Kirkwood when it’s raining on the bottom half of many other resorts. Kirkwood also has an awesome variety of terrain, from solid intermediate slopes to extremely steep bowls and chutes for experts.

My first ski trip of the year was a one day bomb up to Northstar on December 16. Northstar is not one of my favorite resorts; it gets too crowded, is too low, and lacks really tough expert terrain. Despite opening up two entirely new ski areas, it still suffers from the problems suggested by its nickname “Flatstar.” Any ski resort that advertises, of all things, its snowmaking system should immediately cause skiers to doubt its snow quality. Northstar prides itself on the most extensive snowmaking system in Tahoe, and the snowmakers were out in full force the day we were there, spraying us with cold pellets of manmade precipitation. Because the base was so small, only a few lifts were open, and all runs rated more difficult than blue were closed.