I got a new model 3 to replace last year's model S and it hadn't gone to the snow yet, so this week's storm was a great time to take it there. I drove monday in time to beat the storm rolling in and literally beat the chain control by 15 minutes. The road closed a few hours later and stayed closed for 3 days...
I figured that the car might make it to kirkwood in one shot, but it wasn't too clear if it would and it would be pretty miserable if I started running short and had to drive back or ended up getting stuck, so I stopped at the Manteca supercharger for just 15mn, which gave me an extra 10% of battery and I arrived with 20% left, so in the end it wasn't needed:
my car predicted it would arrive with 14% left, that was very close, I would have had 10% left if I hadn't stopped to recharge
Carson Spur is looking interesting now, it closes almost as soon as snow starts falling
Got a nicely priced unit from Pyramid Peak properties and let the car charge slowly over the next 3 days
it was snowing nicely soon after I arrived
The next morning was sadly too windy, so as expected KW opened very late (11:30) and only a couple of boring lifts. I did do a few runs on chair5 until I got bored and confirmed chair6 was not going to open for the day, and went back to my condo to get some work done:
sigh, no chair6 for us :(
Day #2 had another foot+ of new snow, and the roads were still closed. I was hopeful for a great day, but chair6 only opened close to noon (i.e. very late) and only a very narrow band of it (even access to chamoix was closed, and the drain on the other side was closed too of course):
opening the door was interesting
some other doors couldn't be open at all :)
chair6 being readied, finally...
nice warning, I'd rather that they tell us that than stay closed because of limited medical help being available
the runs I was able to do from chair6 didn't suck
Day #3 sadly had the road open from Carson Pass, so people showed up :) More of chair6 got opened:
more snow falling throughout the day
I got to meet Ricky, the head of ski patrol of nicely gave me a tour and showed me the challenges they deal with
eventually the wall opened and that was quite good, I lapped it for the rest of the day :)
Day #4, I stupidly slept at kirkwood due to poor planning on my part, but drove to heavenly to meet my friend Ovidiu to do some powder runs on firebreak and palisades:
nice snow accumulation of the last days
my car was all nice and clean and came out when the sun did :)
obligatory kirkwood sign picture
drove to harrah's parking and joined Ovidiu in the long friday morning gondola line
I noticed that, nice tires on that stretcher
we walked to the first backcountry gate as the lifts weren't running yet (!)
back down to the road
big easy was open, so we took it to the fire break gate to run palisades
We got 3 nice runs on Palisades until heavenly closed the gondola for wind :(
nice runs to burnt forest (2000ft vertical), the rest was more crappy snow
back up for more
nice lenticular cloud that came from the pretty heavy wind
bridge back to firebreak and the bottom of the gondola
And after those 3 nice runs, sadly half of heavenly closed and despite it being barely 13:30, we decided that the rest of heavenly wasn't worth it, so we both went home. Thanks Ovidiu for being my guide for the half day :)
