Snowboarding

Current Music: Dj Doboy Trancequility (silly name, but good DJ) / DJ Mike Rothwell (8H while boarding)
Current Mood: tired, but with a big grin on my face :)


This was definitely a great weekend. I was just mentally tired yesterday, so my reflexes and wits weren't quite there, which is not a good thing when you try to do a jump turn off a corniche, or ride a dense forest :)
Today was however much better (not counting the snow, which while it wasn't so much powder that you could drown in it, it was still a respectable amount).
You can find the pictures here :


Saturday was still nice because I managed to go farther out of bounds that I ever managed to go off palisades (ended up way out there on the road, past the resort)
Sunday, I used the time on the lift to study and practise a few blisnosys patterns and managed to do hard riding without stopping (eating on the lift)
Also, I used the time in the car and hotel room to finish my new anti spamc code, which I'm hoping to release very soon now, and possibly even install at $COMPANY. Those ski weekends end up being great for catching up on my personal Email backlog and coding ;)

I realized today that I'm hooked on the adrenaline of dropping from cornices, riding somewhat dense forests, and doing random jumps as the terrain allows.
I've recently become a fan of WRC (world rally championship) as I've grown the utmost respect for the folks who drive those cars balls out with a cliff on the side and half the time, without a guardrail.
Those folks drive their cars sideways at the limit of control, through snow, dirt, and even rivers, and it takes an incredible amount of split second thinking and reactions to make it to the finish line without ending up upsidedown, or in a tree.

Turns out that I've found the snowboarding I do brings similar challenges and joys when you make it (without me needing a full mechanic crew and a new car every 50km :-) ). Of course, I wouldn't dream to compare my skill to theirs, but I still feel I get a taste of what they experience.
During forest runs, you do get those split second decision moments and you must also be in good enough physical shape to perfectly react to the decision (which usually makes the difference between scoring a nice jump off a snow hill between two trees, or ending up face first into a big tree trunk).
It's a good way to be tuned to your body and be able to know what shape you're in at any moment in time (at the precise moment you need to do something tricky, if you're getting exhausted, you'll get sloppy, missturns, and generally hurt yourself pretty badly if you don't get the hint quickly enough and back down on tricky riding)

Then again, regardless, if you're going off the groomed trails, you'll want:

1. a helmet. Don't even argue, your skull and face are valuable
   
2. solid goggles (saves your face and eyes from scaring if you get a branch in the face)
   
3. wrist guards (no matter how good you are, you will use your hands when you lose balance off a 60 degree slope, if you happen to fall in some unexepected fashion). Too many snowboarders break their wrists, you don't want to be the next one, it really sucks

Turns out that just today, on my one but last run, I did a nice jump off a flat crossing path for people who need a green way back home, but didn't see the small pine tree that was diagonally in my landing zone.
I managed to land on my board and back to slow down and mostly avoid it, but its branch hit me in the face pretty hard. It threw my goggles off, and moved my helmet on my head. That said, I didn't get hurt in any way thanks to those two protections.
If you're adventurous, this could happen to you, so wear your protection :)

Current Music: DJ Tiesto - In Search of Sunrise 2
Current Mood: Tired, even exhausted, but still happy :)

Ok, I admit, if there is anything resembling fresh snow, I'm there.
This was a good weekend overall, I was able to do a few sweet moves that I don't think I'd have been able do to before. Ok, eventually I pushed my luck a bit too much when I tried to jump a 2 foot pine tree on my way down of a goalie that I was riding like a half pipe, but I almost made it (even if almost doesn't count :-D)
In other news, while going doing a very narrow shute between two rock walls, I was jumping over rocks under my board so as not to further damage it, and I messed up one of the jumps and ended up head first agains the rock wall on my right.
Since I was wearing my helmet, I just got up and laughed it off. Without it, it would have been very ugly...

Bad points:

• People I went with are more party folks and we started on the slopes at 11:00 instead of 09:00 on saturday, on this perfect blue bird day :-(
  
• Got home past midnight last night because of how late my ride left and a food stop that just put us further behind (I could have gone to bed at 22:00 instead of 01:00)
  
• Rode in the back of a beat up truck with suspension that was so bad that the whole thing would rock left and right in resonnance around 70mph until it was apparently ready to topple over. Ugh...
  
• I'm usually way too trusting of other drivers as a passenger (I should know better, but I'm usually relaxed anyway, maybe because I'm a fatalist, and being all worried won't help :), but I wasn't happy with the fact that the driver was drinking beers on the way (both ways), even if it was not enough to get impaired (not that I would know)
  
• on top of that, he drove too fast for the weight and braking power (or lack thereof) of his truck, and we did a 180 and hit a snowbank to avoid re-ending the car in front of us. No harm done, but still...
  
• I missed friday, an epic 5 foot powder day

In a nutshell, I should have driven by myself thrusday night and gone there alone. It sucks a bit, but overall, I think it would have been a better plan.

Oh well, next time maybe

Current Music: Armin Van Buuren - Live At Eilat Israel
Current Mood: Must... get... sleep...

I usually don't sleep well while I'm in Tahoe, and this weekend wasn't an exception. Sure, I could take ambiant, but I'd rather not take more than I really have too.
The weekend went fine, I went to Diamond Peak and Sugarbowl for a change. The weather was too nice though, and snow quickly got slushy, to the point that you'd be hurling down the mountain, and almost hit a dead stop when you got in the slushy snow, and got thrown forward if you didn't expect it and didn't keep all your weight back.
Anyway, my friend was nice enough to drive to Tahoe and back (in my car) so that I could check up on mail and all the other stuff I need to catch up on. Funny thing is that for the first time in a long while, I was able to go through my random pictures/videos/jokes attachment list, and found a few funny ones there. I can't really post much of them here, but I might share a few with you if you ask me :)

While this weekend wasn't a stellar ski weekend, we still had a good time, and my friend and I took videos of one another.
What's funny is that I cleared a lot of jumps this weekend, and ate it on every single one that he filmed me on. Funny how that works :)

Anyway, you might enjoy this picture (I did land that one since it was not a video :)

As well as this small video (needs the divx5 codec if you don't have it)

Not counting the 5 accidents we saw on the road, one of them being the car right in front of us on the way to Tahoe, the trip went all right, thanks a lot to A.R. for doing the driving (we left some time before 06:00, so it was a bit gruesome)

The snow was almost good, the powder that had fallen and was falling during that day was nice and dry, but unfortunately it was too little compared to the hard icy crust under it. It's actually amazing I didn't hurt myself that day, since any fall was potentially going to be very painful (maybe that's why I went reasonably easy on jumps :)
Otherwise, I have A.R. a good tour of the spots that were worth seeing at Kirkwood, and he liked it. It's not a really huge domain, but there is still a lot to see, and a lot you can get to, especially if you know about the powder stashes

Too bad, because if you look at the snow, it seemed fine.

but then again, coverage had been greatly diminished in some areas


We considered staying a second day because it was going to snow some more, but finally decided against it because we both had some plans for sunday (never mind that it was all for naught in my case, but I won't go there), and we figured that it was not necessarily going to snow enough to make it a "can't miss powder day"

The kirkwood picts are here

I can't believe that I let Kirkwood be open 3 weekends before finally going there (ok, maybe Halloween weekend was already a tad busy).
I'm not sure which part was the most fun: getting up at 04:40, or snowboarding in Kirkwood with a coworker and his girlfriend... Oh, I know, it was the snowboarding in reasonably fresh powder :)
I used my rock board so that I didn't feel as bad when I further scratched it while having a little too much fun off trails, where once in a while, a few rocks were still showing, or even jumping a few rocks, where there is always a risk of taking off just a litlte bit too late. I just didn't care :)
Big thanks to Jeff for driving my sorry butt most of the way there and back.

As usual, the pictures go here

Current Mood: Good

Some coworkers had rented a house in South Lake Tahoe, so I joined the fun and spent a couple of days there.
Friday night was a horrid drive (luckily I wasn't the one driving): it took about 2H30 to reach 680 and 580 (usually, I can get there in 30mn, and one can drive to Kirkwood in less than 3H when the roads are clear), and the whole trip took more than 5H30. Oh well...
Anyway, I spent saturday at Sierra@Tahoe since I hadn't been there in quite a while, and I was wondering if it was worth the season pass that some of my friends got. Quite frankly, it's an ok place, and it's closer to South Lake than Kirkwood, but it's still rather small, has those stupid traverses that suck for snowboards but that you have to take to make it back to the lift, and well, the weather wasn't as good (they got some rain on the powder they had received).
Since I had taken my very scratched up rock board, I had fun in the different forests, and riding on find a path down and rock hoping terrain. It did mostly ok until I started getting tired and missed a couple of jumps, and landed face first. Ooops :)


The next day was time for Kirkwood. I just love this place for that I was still able to find several day old powder stashes that had been mostly untouched and had a great time riding through them all day, up to the last lift to palisades, down to kiddie land right back to where the car was parked.
As I write this the next day, I'm barely sore, and not really hurting badly anywhere, so either my body is getting more resilient, or I've done a better job of not smashing it :)
Anyway, snow was getting a little thin in some places towards the end, so I think I'll wait until the next snowfall now. As usual, pictures are here

I ended up going to Heavenly this weekend, joining some coworkers who were already going.
While Heavenly was a complete absolute zoo, as I had feared (we weren't on the slopes before 11:30, even though we had left Mountain View around 06:15, and this included almost an hour line to get up to mid base through the gondola), it was still good to go there for a change, not only to spend some time with some coworkers, but also do something different for a change.

I never much liked Heavenly because of its flat spots, which aren't fun for snowboarders, its general lack of snow compared to Kirkwood (and also because the crowds usually ruin the snow they do get pretty quickly), and stuff like a ticket price of $68/day during an MLK weekend (sheesh!), but if you find the right spots, after a snowfall there is still some good boarding to be done, and especially, Heavenly wins for the breathtaking view (they have the best view of all of Lake Tahoe)


I was initially supposed to meet other friends at Kirkwood for sunday, but it was complicated, caused some trouble for people who would have been happy to help, but I didn't want to impose, and all in all, it was nicer to stay with the group I had gone up with.
All in all, it was a fun weekend, even though it was at Heavenly (ok, just teasing :)



Anyway, the pictures are here

This was my 3rd company ski trip at work, and indeed the biggest one so far (about 2,500 people). The logistics were pretty incredible. While I had to wake up at 04:45 on thursday, the first bus did leave at 05:30 from Mountain View, and I was on the slopes at Squaw by 10-ish.
That was good news in theory, except that being a good lazy snowboarder, I thought it was better to take the Far East Express lift off the parking lot and board down to the gondola instead of walking across the parking lot to go there directly. I kind of knew that the terrain would be icy and dicy, double black equivalent, but it wasn't the first time I had done terrain like this, and I was ok with it. My mistake however was to kind of set aside the fact that I had also changed my board, my bindings and my stance, and that I was riding with those brand new combinations for the first time. But eh, just to make it interesting, I also took the straight way down the face of the mountain, to where I was going, instead of the longer path around. I'll blame lack of judgement on lack of sleep.
End result, I missed just one jump turn that I overshot due to the new stance I wasn't used to, fell, and rolled once or twice. No big deal at the time, and I went to enjoy the rest of the day.




Enjoyable it was, since I was the only person to show up on time for a ride with two celebrity snowboarders who were there for us. It was definitely an honor to ride with them, and I had extra pressure to keep up with them down the interesting terrain we used (not counting that one of them suggested that I adjust my stance to something less aggressive, which took me some way to re-learn on the way down).


Yeah, don't mind the silly hat, it was a google hat that they gave so that we could recognize one another on the slopes

The day was great, and I had a good time at the Squaw Creek resort chilling in the hot tub at the end of the day, waiting for the evening party.



The party itself was impressive: huge tents in the middle of the Squaw parking lot, with 5 different themes and music. While the beginning was fun, it kind of went downhill when they closed 4 of the tents and everyone ended up in the main one: not only was it a bit too crowded, but the band, which was playing 80s music (fairly well actually) was also playing way too freaking loud, making it nearly impossible to have a discussion with anyone I met there. That was a shame, really, and I ended up going back to my hotel around 23:30, and was in bed by midnight, instead of past 03:00 for the previous years.



My night wasn't stellar due to some pain in my right ribs, linked to my first fall on icy moguls in the morning, but I still made it to the slopes the next morning and had a decent time until 13:00 or so. By then, the pain became increasingly noticeable, until I had to bail, almost an hour early because I was unable to snowboard properly as a result. I still took the unchartered black diamond down instead of the long boring path filled with obstacles (I mean people), and while I made it down, I could tell that I was starting to push my luck and my much reduced abilities. In the end, when I got to the bottom, I walked 2mn to the red dog lift back to my hotel instead of taking KT-22 and some other mogully slope.



While I had a good time during the trip, but the time I got home by 20:30, the pain was bothering me more, and this morning I went to an E.R., where 2H and some X-Rays later, they at least confirmed that I didn't break anything, but that I most likely badly inflamated the connection between my lower right rib and cartilage (which explains why the pain got worse over time)
Recovery time: 2 to 6 weeks worst case, damn. I'm not in huge pain, although lots of movements do strain that area, and daily life will be fine, but sports are out of the question for now I suppose. Well, we'll see how it goes....
Either way, I have no right to complain, with the kind of ridding I do, this is really no big deal considering :)

Oh, and all the pictures are here

Ok, so I didn't exactly get picked up to go to kirkwood, my ride had a problem and had to cancel. The only problem was that it was after 21:30, and my backup plan was to spend the weekend at a cabin with coworkers, but they had already left, so no riding with them.
Then, just to make matters simple, since I sold my mazda protege, the only car I had that could take chains, neither my miata with R compound tires, nor my M5 with "do not ever use in snow" low profile tires that can't take chains without breaking traction control sensors, were a good idea.
I had actually just bought a set of spikes spiders sport, but those take a while to install the first time, and arent' much fun in the dark with a flash light when it's raining. Also, a quick read of the manual and measurement seemed to indicate that they wouldn't fit my wheel offset (clearly, they've never sold them to a BMW M5 owner, or they'd know that it wouldn't really fit).
After about an hour of considering options, I realized that I could just drive the M5 to my coworker's cabin since it's only at 4000 feet, and then ride to Tahoe with them the next days.
On the way there, breaking some new records (Sunnyvale to Jackson in 1h30 flat, with triple digit speeds, including 88, and a cop coming the other way, I nicely avoided because I slowed down on 88 for each car coming), I found out that Kirkwood's cancellation policy wasn't that good, and that my $530 for double unit way too big for me anyway would be hard to get back.
After some trouble (I was stupid enough to trust my GPS navigation system and take some stupid roads it indicated instead of staying on Hwy 88 and following the paper directions I had), I ended up in the middle of BFE, and my nav system said "I now have no idea where you are, good luck", which is always nice in the middle of Pioneer (gold rush city off hwy 88) past midnight. Eventually, I actually ended up on the road my coworker's house was on, and after more night driving trying to find signs and numbers, ended up at his place around 01:00-ish.
After realizing that I probably wouldn't get much sleep there (I heard up to 29 people would show up, and there were going to do more partying than sleeping and going to kirkwood when the lifts open), and since it wasn't actually raining at the time (despite weather reports), I took a chance and drove to kirkwood, where I got a little more than 30mn later after getting badly lost because my GPS sent me the wrong way and I had no idea how to get back to hwy 88.
Long story short, I was in bed in my double unit by 02:30. Unfortunately, for some unknown reason, I had a very bad night, and barely slept more than 4H

I was on one of the first lifts up today at 08:45, and had a decent day (it wasn't a monster powder day, but it was nice, and almost empty). The first 2H were tough though, as my body really wasn't awake, and I had a hard time snowboarding at all. Eventually, it woke up a few hours later.



Now the only fun things are that my car is almost out of gas (yeah, you don't really find gas in the middle of nowhere at 02:00), and I have no idea if my spikes spider are going to fit. If they don't, getting out of here is going to be very dodgy (starting with chain control, which will never let me through).
I actually spent an hour trying to set them up in the underground parking lot (ok, that was definitely worth part of the money I gave kirkwood, not a trace of snow on my car :) and indeed the offset is wrong.
The clips that hold only the bolts also look flimsy, and I'm surprised they don't specify any maximum speed when you don't drive with the chains. Somehow, I think the thing will just fly off if I drive 140 with it (especially as I can only clip it to 4 out of my 5 bolts, one is an anti-theft one with a different pattern), and yet it's designed to be set on your car once, and left there. Oh well, I'll deal with taking it in and out, even though it takes quite a while (30mn each time I guess) as opposed to 1mn to put the chains on after that. They look butt ugly on my rims anyway. If you're curious to see what the setup looks like, have a peek (the chain assembly just clips on, except that on my tires, the metal part doesn't stick out enough, so clipping is a problem because the tire sidewall gets in the way)
I guess you call that flying without a safety net, but right now, I don't really care, I'm just happy I made it there (even if alone), enjoying the snow, and in a double unit apartment that 5 times what I need, but that's warm and has working wireless :)

This morning I already had to check out (fully booked for sat night), and I was somewhat worried the that maybe only gas station I could get to without pushing might run out of gas this 3 day weekend, so I drove out the nice covered parking lot and went to get a few gallons (it's the wrong octane rating, but my engine will auto-adapt down). The very short drive down there was interesting to say the least. I confirmed that my tires have close to 0 traction in the snow (and we're talking traces, maybe 5mm), but BMW's DSC (stability control) did a good job of it, I think it's hard to spin the car out if you drive slow. I'm just worried of what it would do downhill or uphill if the car weight exceeds the very little traction the tires offer (which is why I'm not really looking forward to driving over Carson Spur on them if there is any snow/ice)
I checked at the main lodge if a room had freed up for tonight, and they just got a studio for the bargain price of $350/night, swell. First, I thought that they were pushing, and then figured fuck it, I can afford it anyway. Unfortunately, in the 2mn that took, the room got booked.
Oh well, I went to have Kirkwood's famous cheese and bacon croissant, started a little late (09:45), but since it hadn't really snowed, that was ok.
The funny part is that I got to meet someone from mc during the day. When we Emailed this week, we realized were were both spending the weekend in kirkwood, so might as well meet there. That's unusual, but I found the idea amusing.
She's a blue skier, so we had lunch and did a 3 runs together (solitude first, then I brought her to Corniche, which she had never done, and she survived the way down, although I had to catch her once when she missed a turn and was most likely going to slide down the hill for a long time (rode down in front of her, and stopped her, which was a bit brutal, I got hit in the face a bit, but whatever, I wear protection for a reason)



After being booted off corniche the second time up because she has a beginner pass and wasn't allowed on the said lift, we did the reut, and then she bailed because she was getting tired, so I had enough time for another couple of walls in heavy snow and fairly bad visibility, and one last corniche to finish the day.
I went to the main lobby again to beg for a room, but they only had one that just freed up and hadn't got cleaned ($350 too), and that was it (they later confirmed that they were not allowed to sell it to me unclean). So, I just went back to the meadows, and I'm going to sleep behind one of the sofas on the 2nd floor (luckily I brought a sleeping bag, and an air mattress, so with ear plugs on top, it should be ok as long as no staff finds me and tries to boot me out).
It's still nice and warm, and they still have wireless :)
Looking at snow conditions, I may actually stay all 4 days: tomorrow is going to get a fair amount of snow too, so I might as well stay until monday night. If the floor isn't too bad tonight, I'll probably do the same thing tomorrow night too.
In the meantime, my car is safe illegally parked in a safe spot underground :)

Mmmh, I also just received some not so good news, which I guess were good news too. It's good to at least know something. Thanks.

I don't think I can express how happy I am that I decided to crash at kirkwood. Carson Spurr was of course closed until noon-ish, so had I gone to my friend's cabin, I'd have missed a 2 foot powder day, something that you only get a couple of times a year.
In the funny fact category, I was on the very first lift up the mountain (Solitude, which I ran 3 times while others were waiting and hoping in the Corniche line, which wasn't opening because ski patrol was still blasting the mountain).
I don't know how many powder runs I did, but I was able to use all my well known hidden spots and get fresh tracks down many times off multiple lifts as they opened.
I even got 3 runs of Sunrise (chair 4, back side), even though the lift was quite flaky and only ran for about 4 runs. The trips down in wide open bowls filled with powder were just awesome.
And on top of that, after getting the first chair up, I sneaked on the very last chair up the mountain on Corniche, for a last palisades run.








People waiting for ski patrol to open a new bowl is always funny. Looks like a gold rush

Tonight, I'm staying at the kirkwood main lodge. It's way too expensive ($350/night for a studio), but they only had one, I needed a shower, and it has a great view on the reut and the wall. It's also snowing tonight (another foot), so I might as well stay here. The only sucky part is no wireless. WTF? Oh well, at least I have a modem and a 1-800 number I can call...



Oh, in case I forgot to mention that, I had a great day today :)

I hadn't realized when getting up this morning that this was the first time I felt slightly sore, not in a bad way though (and after getting home and writing this, I can't really say I'm hurting anywhere except a little bit for my left knee, which brushed a tree from a little to close ;)
This last day was quite good too, not the epic powder day, but still a nice amount of powder and lots of spots left to run in the mountain. My only mishap for those 4 days was to hit my knee against a tree I went a bit too close to. No big deal, but a good reminder that I'm sometimes cutting it a little close, just to get more of the fluffy white stuff :)
I saw a guy do a back flip off the wave, that was pretty cool. Unfortunately, I'm missing the first couple of seconds of video (didn't get my camera out quickly enough), but this still taken off the video still looks good



Since it was snowing pretty much all day (even if only lightly sometimes), my concern was getting home, but while I was there, I might as well still do an entire day of riding, so I only left after 16:45 or so (this included finding someone to jump start my car since for some very strange reason, the battery had lost most of its juice. I'll have to look into that problem).
Anyway, I got very lucky, the temperature and sun were just right, so Carson Spur was actually open with no chain control and no snow on the road as it was melting on contact (although had I left 30 to 45mn later, that would have been a different story). I got home in about 3H05, which ain't too bad, and even averaged a respectable 24mpg (instead of my usual 12 to 14 :)



Although I do regret that I ended up going there by myself, it was a great 4 days.
The rest of the pictures and videos are here

Let's run this backwards:

• Got home from work too late last night (past midnight), but I did manage to release a new kernel, and all the fun stuff to auto switch from IDE to SATA hopefully safely, on workstations with a SATA/IDE controller in combined mode (the fun part is that if you get it wrong, the machine won't reboot)
  
• Sat down for a quick dinner with N who is busy with work as usual, and finishing a paper for school
  
• Had food after boot camp, and shared a fun discussion with engineers on how to remotely control flying animals after having fitted a camera on them (don't ask :) )
  
• Century boot camp. I actually did ok for a change, maybe I'm slowly coming back
  
• Ok work day
  
• Sunday evening with HS, enjoyed a yummy salmon and other things :)
  
• Sunday afternoon, catching up on house work, and my presentation for linux.conf.au
  
• Saturday, day at Sugarbowl with coworkers. It was a bit disappointing unfortunately: it didn't snow as planned, and I was just generally tired, out of it, and didn't snowboard well at all. HS loved it though. I did a nice fall off a pretty steep slope, apparently due me feeling too lucky and to lack of coordination, but nothing bad happened. My friend Arturo unfortunately broke his ankle after being thrown off a mogul. I ended up driving everyone home since I was the only other person who knew how to drive a stick shift. Actually, I got quite lucky, as being lazy, I took a snowmobile path back to the parking lot, and fell close to the end due to bad snow and only be bound in with one foot (little control). I feel smack on my butt, putting both hands and wrists out, having freshly removed my wrist guards and gloves. Luckily the snow gave in, and I didn't break anything, but my wrists got a close call...
  Oh well, at least we got good weather. Pictures are here , and a I didn't suck too much this time video
  
• Friday, I was just generally tired and was falling slowly sick in the afternoon, so I went home for some good rest
  
• and all the rest was so that I could listen to Armin on thursday. Oh wait, no, it doesn't work that way :)

Grr, the Z chains I bought for my car don't actually fit my wheels (I did a test fit last night).
First they will be a real bitch to install (very little clearance, my arm doesn't really fit between the tire and the wheel well. Fun to install the chain in the back (you can't turn the wheel).
Not that you really care, so long story short, I ordered larger chains today, some that will actually fit, but I'm pissed because I really would have driven to Tahoe tonight to get the great powder that fell yesterday and today, and now I have no way to get there, so I'm just going to work like a loser tomorrow...

Like every year, my company has somehow been able to organize a company-wide ski trip for an ever growing number of employees. However, this time they had to split the company in 3 waves, because there was just no way to make us fit in all the hotels at Squaw, even by putting 3-4 people per room.
Because my intent when going there is indeed to get as close to 2 full days of snowboarding as possible, I went got up at 04:30 (ouch, ouch, ouch!) and left Mountain View on the 05:30 bus, on which I managed to get with most of my stuff (including my cell phone, which I didn't know I had managed to pack afterall).
Snow the first day was actually decent, but the weather sucked: I don't mind snow, or bad visibility, but the visiblity was indeed quite poor, strong winds, and rain...

Crack of down trip to Squaw, thankfully I slept part of that trip


Bad weather on the first day, but better snow


Wet and rainy weather on day 1, with high wind, causing ice like this

The second day (friday), the weather was nice, but the whole mountain was icy most of the day, except for some sun facing groomed runs.
I actually managed not to really fall during the entire time despite the sometimes dicy conditions, until I pushed my luck a bit while trying to jump a small pine tree, and didn't quite get the jump right, got my board caught and ended up doing a face plant, and got some hard snow rash on my cheek. Oh well, that'll teach me :)

Day 2 weather was better, but the snow was crap as a result (icy)

You can look at the rest of the Pictures of Squaw

While my original plan was to stay during the weekend, but the snow conditions were just not good enough to warrant that. Instead, I spent a very nice weekend in good company, which included me not doing a whole lot besides rollerbladding, and being very happy with the end result :)

Since I hadn't gone flying in a while, and the conditions looked bad for snowboarding, I used the weekend to keep up my flighing skills.
Saturday, I did a couple of different flights in an Cutlass (Cessna 172RG) to work towards my complex rating (variable pitch propeller and retractible gear), and those went reasonably all right considering that I was not super awake and sharp.
For sunday, I had decided to go to the mountains anyway, and did my reconnaissance flight to Mammoth lakes. Getting there can be tricky since you really have to worry about winds and the direction they're blowing (since they can induce tumbling downdrafts and smack your airplane down the face of the mountain faster than you can climb out of it)
Turns out sunday had the best weather you could possibly get: calm and reasonably cold (cold = better plane performance).
I ended up landing at Mariposa-Yosemite/O68/KMPI , then crossed to the other side of Mammoth and landed close to the ski resort ( KMMH ), checked out the airport, and then went north for the scenic Mono lake which I hadn't seen in a while ( Lee Vining O24 )

The flight itself ended up being fairly easy and the only time I was slightly nervous was when heading up the closed HWY 120 from Mono Lake while still climbing to 12500 feet at a respectable 3-400 ft/mn: this was the first time that I was nervous seeing peaks around me instead of under me. I'll take that as a healthy fear :)
All in all, I was very happy to have Einar, our CFI, in the plane, as I felt it was good to have a second opinion or someone making sure I wasn't making any bad decisions. Outside of my so-so performance with radio calls, things went all right.
I should also mention the backup photographer in the back seat who took great pictures when not sleeping on the job or not too jittery due to too much caffeine or overindulging with a 10x zoom :)
(actually those pictures below are quite nice and steady)

Mammoth airport






Lee Vining airport




Mono Lake


Those peaks were high :)




Beautiful Yosemite, courtesy of Ms 10x zoom :)




Back at PAO just in time for sunset

You can also look at the rest of the Mammoth Flight Pictures

The week flew by as usual.
Unfortunately, while the weekend, and especially saturday looked like a great snow day, but events conspired against me for not being able to go Saturday. In the end, while I did regret it, it was just as well because I was able to use the rest time. I also started experimenting with SATA to replace my current 26 disk/2TB configuration (it's probably costing me $50-$100 in electricity a month, so it's time to upgrade to something bigger with fewer drives :)
Sunday, I went with a coworker to a new place I had never been to: Dodge Ridge . It was a somewhat smaller mountain, off hwy 108 but the slopes were still nice , and the snow, while being heavy powder, was challenging: my back leg got quite a workout :)
This worked out just fine as when I wasn't sure if I'd be able to go with him, I checked out the weather, and figured out it I could fly to Truckee on sunday, and spend the day at NorthStar, which is nearby. Unfortunately, there wasn't a single plane free for the day, even the special 172XP I had learn to fly because hardly anyone is checked out in it.
During the day at Dodge Ridge, I played with my GPS some more, and its weird and hidden menus. All in all, it's not bad if you know its weird interface and quirks, but I do get mad at Garmin once in a while for the sheer stupidity of the some of decisions they made, or just pure bad design.

I had barely come back from Chicago, that I was already planning my next trip at Tahoe since bad weather (i.e. snow) was here. It was a bit complicated, but in the end, I ended up going for a weekend at Heavenly with my friend Arturo, and skied there for free since the Concierge people at work gave me a free pass because they like me :)
Heavenly still sucks for snowboarders because of all its flat spots, or even uphills, but the snow was not bad, and snowboarding with my coworkers was fun, so it was all good :)
According to my GPS, my top speed this time was 40mph for the first day and 38mp for the second day (almost 65km/h), not bad. Of course, I tend to go for difficulty in powder, and tree dodging at lower speed, which I find more enjoyable. I did reasonably as because I had no real falls and don't hurt anywhere right now, except for my right shoulder which I did indeed hurt by clipping a tree a bit too close, and it didn't really yield, as branches usually do :)
Oh, and a game I just made up was to scan for access points during the trip there and back. I ended up finding more than 3000 of them! The winning ESSID was "don't hack me!" :)

My coworker Arturo was going to Whistler and offered for me to join him, so since I had never gone there, and had wanted to go there for a while, I took him up on his offer. It was definitely nice to be able to join a trip that I didn't have to plan for a change :)

In a nutshell, we didn't get that lucky with the weather: Whistler is a very low mountain (800 metres for the base, 2200 metres for the peak), and unfortunately, weather was too warm at those altitudes, even in Canada, with the result of snow conditions being much worse than they were at Tahoe in California.
At least, the first day was nice and sunny as the other two were very cloudy, with the second one being so cloudy that part of the day we could not see where we were going due to almost 0 visibility. As a result, we stayed on the lower portions of the mountain, but that also meant riding in half melted snow and avoiding rocks and grass. The only redeeming thing was that it was fun to board on paths covered with snow when everything around you was totally melted, it felt a bit artificial but fun to do at the same time.
All in all, even if the conditions were far from ideal, it was fun to see those two mountains, as they were indeed huge. I can only imagine how much fun they must be when you get fresh powder. Lucky canadians...

It was clear that day 2 was going to suck when we the clouds were almost at ground level, at the base parking lot lift.

When you're in the clouds, you can't see anything


I had to learn to ride T-bars, which on a snowboard is interesting. Basically you put a bar behind your front leg, and let the cable pull you. Too bad the lift police had a strong policy on not letting people ride with both feet bound in the snowboard


By taking the right lifts at the right times, we could be above the low cloud layer, and the top one




The snow at the bottom was all gone except for the path to ride back to the parking lot


It was nice, for kids they had a castle with rides in the middle of the mountain




We got a brief reprieve in the weather, we were able to see the huge glacier on Blackcomb, it's a 9km+ ride from the top back to the list


That was kind of fun, I ended up on the top of this rocks, and I was too lazy to hike back up, so I got down, somehow. Long story short, it was hard and technical due to the sheer lack of snow

You can look at the rest of the pictures from Whistler by following the link.
You can also look at the file with GPS coordinates from those 3 days of snowboarding in whistler (garmin format)

It might not have seemed like much but going to Mammoth again is something I had wanted to do for a long time now (7 years) because it was the very first time I had gone to a ski resort, and the first time I had flow in a small plane too.
I thought both were cool, and I picked up snowboarding soon thereafter, and flyiing a few years later (better late than never ;) )
This day was my first time doing a solo flight to Mammoth and going to the resort to enjoy the snow. My last and first time there, I spent my entire day on a bunny slope, and kicked myself for it later considering how much there was to see in the mountain :) (not that I had a choice, I had no idea how to ski or board).
Turns out I have some pictures from that day, and even found the exact date and ex-coworker pilot I went with back then. All the pictures from back then are here

Anyway, this time it was my turn to go on my own.
The flight to Mammoth was mostly uneventful, due to nice weather, and a triply redundant navigation route: VORs (Merced/El Nido/HYP, Vector 023 off Friant VOR with a shortcut by the GPS intersection CAINS), and two GPSes: the built in Apollo GX60 in the plane, and my hand held hiking Garmin Etrex Vista Cx (used for the maps shown below).
My path, unbeknownst to me, actually went right over the ski slopes of Mammoth (pictures #3 and #4 below), so it was nice to get a glimpse from the sky.
The landing was uneventful, except for a not very square base to final turn which overshot the runway a bit, as I had a hard time turning. It's only later that I realized that I had forgotten to turn off the quite primitive 1 axis autopilot (don't laugh, in that plane, it's not actually that obvious that it's on as opposed to just feeling some wind resistance)

the ski slopes are tracks are easier to see on the full size pictures in the picture library

Turns out the my Etrex Vista would make quite a decent GPS for flying: it has routing capabilities, built in altimeter and compass (with magnetic and true heading) to backup the GPS data, and as a GPS (with WAAS built in), it's actually a better GPS than most GPSes in older planes. Unfortunately, according to FAA regulations, Garmin apparently cannot provide airnav maps for that GPS, so while it has most airports, it's missing all airnav GPS intersections (like CAINS here), and of course navaids like VORs (El Nido/HYP and Friant/RIU in my flight).
It's kind of a shame that airnav data can't be put easily on that GPS, because in some ways, it would be a more useful GPS to use than the one in many planes (many don't even have a real/usable moving map screen), and it can be conveniently loaded with a route at home, as opposed to in flight (on the ground is hard since you may run out the battery if you haven't started the engine, and if you are running the engine, you pay $100-$150/h just to program a GPS :-/ )

Anyway, I ended up trying a route southbound from KPAO towards the SJC class charlie, and crossed over 101 going east as soon as Norcal cleared me for crossing the approach into SJC, and go eastbound towards Merced. Looking at the route logged by my GPS, it seems to confirm that going a bit too far north via Sunol pass is just easier and quicker than trying to take a short cut under Charlie to SJCC and then trying to shoot up to clear the mountains in front of you. I'll know that for next time.

The flight looked like this (going there was the bottom line, and coming back was the top line).



You can notice that the top line (return trip) takes a different path than the way there because we had some very interesting clouds on the way back. They were so wild and high that I could not clear them at 14,000 feet, and barely clear them on the alternate path I took (after checking the map to make sure that I would be nowhere close to any obscured mountain top, and indeed I had at least 5000 feet clearance).
I took full advantage of my allowance to fly 30mn at 14,000 feet and I'm apparently lucky to have a body that doesn't mind that altitude much, as I felt fine. My passenger however reported mild altitude sickness, but thankfully nothing serious as flying lower would have likely meant aborting the flight and going back to Mammoth. All the cloud pictures below were taken while I was at 14k feet, it was interesting to plot a course between them, as if they were high mountains. I also paid close attention to my VSI to make sure I wouldn't somehow get into a downdraft, but the air was quite smooth.

clouds were going higher than 14k feet, I had to find a path between them where I wouldn't end up IFR, while not ending up totally out of course

Due to where I ended up once I had cleared the clouds and the mountains, I was north enough that it made more sense to come back via Livermore and Sunol pass, so I just did that.
What was a bit weird was that I was having a hard time setting the plane down at PAO: I had bounces on all 3 landings, despite an approach speed of 65knots, and wind that didn't seem gusty. The first two times, I just elected to go around and come back for another try, and was able to set the plane down the 3rd time, but I wish I knew exactly why I got those landing bounces and if I could have done something to avoid them as in more than 450 landings, I've never had this problem. I asked one of my CFIs, but didn't get anything conclusive. Oh well, a mystery for the day, and what matters is that I went through procedure and did proper go arounds when warranted.

You can look at the rest of the pictures from the flight to Mammoth (KMMH) and download a mapsource compatible gdb GPS file of the flight and the snowboarding

Anyway, enough about the flight, here is some info on the resort itself:
Driving to Mammoth from the airport is about 15-20mn and costs around $28 each way, which is close to what you'd pay for a rental car, without the hassle of renting a car that is.
The resort itself seems to have 4 different lodges that you can start from, and the peak is at 11,053 feet. While the snow wasn't too great by end of April, it still made for decent snowboarding, and even if we only had 4H of boarding before the resort closed, it was still enough to see most of it.

Jen was a bit tired, but did ok considering, and it was a good day. I was keeping an eye on the clouds that were coming down as the day progressed, and even if they worried me a bit, I figured I'd find out in the air whether there would be a path home, or not, and they were, so it made for a good exercise.

You can look at the rest of the pictures from Mammoth resort

Yeah, it's kind of sad that mid december counts as early season, but snow came really late this year, and it's only in mid december that there was arguably enough of a snow cover to justify going. Sunday 17th was a good day for kirkwood as Corniche had just opened the day before, and the Wall just opened that day, which gave access to some nice almost powder runs in the side forest.
The snow cover was decent considering how little precipitation we've gotten so far, but there was still a lot of uncovered or badly covered rocks and vegetation, which made for some scratches in the boards. In 5 years of going to kirkwood, it's also the very first time that I saw them making snow...
I've confirmed that my new boots are too small and basically unwearable without much sheer pain, so I'm going to have to find a new pair, which is hard considering they're custom burton boots with side click in bindings, but I guess that's the price to pay for having that convenience.
All in all, conditions weren't great, but considering I won't get to see any snow until beginning of February, it was good to have gone today.
Oh, and kudos to Xav for getting us there while staying on the road, not like the people we saw on 50, on the way to kirkwood.

ze transporter

And the remaining pictures of early season at Kirkwood

Labels: snow

Another year, another company ski trip. Sure, getting up at 04:50 for the 05:30 bus to Squaw was a bit tough, and we got there pretty quickly considering. I was on the slopes around 10:30 (the driver getting lost and going to Northstar instead of Squaw having something to do with it).
Unfortunately, the snow coverage was totally abysmal for february. I had never seen anything that bad... Thank you global warming!

All in all, the conditions just didn't feel good enough to stay a second day, so I just went home the next morning after the party.
A few more pictures of Squaw with little snow

Unfortunately, the local ski resort in Yosemite (Badger Pass) was still reporting quite poor conditions, so I offered to go to Dodge Ridge, which was the closest option nearby (well, it was only 111 miles, but it still took a bit more than 3H due to the road conditions). At least, we were able to make it without chains.
While by the time we made it to the back runs, it was unfortunately already 13:30, the 2H we had there were pretty sweet. The snow was still pretty sweet: not even wet powder

You can see the other Pictures from Dodge Ridge

Labels: snow

I've gone through all my snow pictures , and since I have more than 3000 of them as I write this, I went in each directory and made a BestOf directory.
I then wrote a script to collate all those BestOf pictures into a collated best of snow pictures over time (this one is actually worth looking at), and then went through the tough task of making a Best of Best of snow pictures below :)

Labels: snow

While this was initially supposed to be a snowboarding reunion for former VA coworkers at Whistler, it ended up being Dragan, Jen, and me, later joined by two coworker to help fill the place we had gotten.
The snow conditions were quite good: fresh powder every day, although at the samme time, visibility was quite poor at times, and it got somewhat cold on some days. But eh, I'll be happy with this any day :) Unfortunately, marginal whiteout visibility also made Jen noxious and unable to board until she got out of it (it wasn't a full whiteout, I could see which way was down, but visibility was indeed poor)
Unfortunately, 3 days wasn't really enough to cover the whole mountain like Arturo and I had done the prior year (because we weren't equally matched in skills, were a bit late in the mornings, and made the good choice to loiter around some runs when the snow conditions warranted them instead of trying to cover more and more runs). At the same time, it showed me portions of Whistler that I was longing to board, but didn't have the time, or opportunity to. That kind of sucks because it'll just make me want to come back :) (I would have given a lot to spend an entire day shreading powder in the symphony bowl, some of those runs looked awesome).
I also found out that one is better off having a cabin in Whistler than one in Blackcomb as far as mountain accessibility is concerned, but sometimes you also have to go with what's still available. This also goes for flights where the suitable friday evening flight to Vancouver had had its price conveniently raised to over $400 per person, with a return flight that was 3H late due to the United plane we needed, coming from Chicago, and being very late (thank you United for still having your fscking hub in the worst airport in the US)
Anyway, I digress. Here are a few picts:

flight from SFO to YVR

Thanks to Dragan for organizing the trip, and getting us from the airport to Whiistler and back, a link to the best of picts and all the pictures from Whistler

After 4 to 6 feet of snowfall in tahoe (long overdue), we were longing for snow. Turns out that people who tried to make it the previous weekend, had a very hard time, or even had to turn back, just because the driving conditions were so bad.
Xav, aka "ze transporter", got us there in time for the beginning of the ski day. The powder was unfortunately a few days old by the time we got there, but I was able to find some in deep palisades (i.e. too out of reach for most people to bother going there)

All in all, not a real powder day, but still a good day to go. A few more pictures here

Labels: snow

Needless to say that this year was the most crummy snow season in more than 25 years. Kirkwood had already closed its back side, and what was left wasn't looking good, even though it had already snowed about a foot in the last week (which was the reason for chancing it, and going to kirkwood).

Unfortunately, the snow was only good for a few hours (it started melting a bit, and then froze up before the end of the day). By the time we were about to leave, it started snowing.
After checking a few snow forecasts, we decided to pay the kirkwood ripoff rate of $430/night for a one bedroom, and stayed over for the night (conveniently, Kirkwood didn't have the resources to get their cheaper rooms cleaned and only had the most expensive 1 bedrooms available that night, figures...)
That said, it snowed all night, and we got a good foot with the snow continuing into the next day.

And we got a very nice powder day the second day:

For that matter, it was my first powder day this season. Sad but true... As for Jennifer it was more or less her first real powder day ever. She had fun learning how to board in deeper powder.
Thanks much to Bob who got us there and back. It was nice to board together at kirkwood, like the good old days...

The rest of the end of season at kirkwood pictures

Labels: snow

This season has been crummy so far, like last year, but we finally got another storm (2-3ft, adding enough to have a somewhat safe natural base), so just as I was about to leave for the Xmas vacation, I decided to do a quick day trip to Tahoe the day before taking the plane.
My initial plan had been to go to Kirkwood, but just to make things "simpler", as I headed out on the freeway, I called the Caltrans number, and sure enough, hwy 88 was closed just before kirkwood for avalanche control. Quite frankly, that did not make sense to me because we had had very little snow so far and I didn't see how a 1-2ft dump could create an avalanche, but there it was "hwy 88 closed" at 05:10 when I headed out.
I thought about my options while driving, and ended up not going for kirkwood when I got to the 680/580 cross, and caltrans still reported 88 closed. Now, one could think that it was likely going to open eventually, but I've known days when they kept it closed until noon, and it was raining/snowing rather hard as I was driving up, so I went for plan B: hwy 50 to South Lake, and therefore Sierra @ Tahoe (which I had verified was opened by going on their web site on my cell phone).
Of course, 10-15mn later, 88 had opened, but it was just too late for it not to make much sense for me to turn around. Then, I got my first chain control at 2500ft, more than 30 miles from Sierra, and I basically just blew them off and kept going. Caltrans is very annoying in making everyone put chains on when there are are a couple of flurries, which is just total bullshit.
The second checkpoint, though, was in hindsight more worth it, but at the time there was still a track for my tires to touch the rode, so I elected to blow that one off too. However, soon after that, due to lack of traffic, my tires soon ended up not being in contact with the road anymore, but careful driving and traction control still allowed me to steer and brake as necessary.
However, I made the fatal mistake of stopping my car to take the picture of that sign. Doh, doh, doh! Once the car was stopped, it was too heavy to restart and get traction on the snow with my very non snow rated tires.

This was the sign that was the beginning of my doom. I should never have stopped for it. The problem was that I went a bit to the side of the road to put the chains on, and my chains are not only mostly a two person job, but also require moving the car back and forth. Luckily, I had some drivers stop over and help me put them on (they first offered to tow my car back to the middle of the road, which I didn't think was quite necessary, but it did help putting the chains on more easily, although it also blocked the road). With help, the chains indeed went on in 10mn or so, and I was back on my way, but the whole thing still cost me 45mn to 1h. In hindsight, I could/should have put the chains at the second checkpoint, but they had no one helping to put them on anyway, and I just have no way to trust the caltrans folks for being serious about the chains, or freaking out because there's a touch of white on the road.

Anyway, I did arrive at Sierra@Tahoe eventually, but the visibility was so bad that if it were not for a waypoint I had on my GPS, I would likely have missed the place, and even when I was there, I just could not see the road going there, and didn't want to turn into a ditch :) Luckily, I found a snowplow, asked the guy, he snowplowed me a route to the resort, and I was able to get to the parking lot. By 10:30, I was finally on the slopes, having left at 05:10...
The snow itself was deep powder, but it was tough to stay on top in many places due to lack of slope, or weird terrain (an probably the type of snow too). My back leg is still burning 3 days later, from trying to keep my weight back :)
Yet, it was still fun, and good exercise.

The way back, however, wasn't a piece of cake either. I left just a bit early because I was tired, and had to go home, pack, and go to bed early for my plane the next morning, but when I stopped past the checkpoint to take my chains off, I made the mistake of trying to get them off by myself (unlinking them shouldn't be that hard), and unlinked the wrong side first. In the process, 20-30mn later, I had one chain off, and I got one of the inside chains stuck to something in the frame. Because there is so little clearance in the wheel well, I could not see where it was stuck, or how, and could only feel with my hand that very barely fit. After a short while, I first thought it was doomed, and that I'd have to remove the wheel to get access to what's stuck and remove the chain, but my car didn't come with a jack since it didn't come with a spare either due to the size of the wheels and calipers.
Finding a jack I could borrow was not easy (I was right by a caltrans checkpoint with trucks and all, and no one had a jack). Eventually, I was able to borrow one from a car but due to the snow, all I did manage to do was to jack up my car, and then have it slide sideways on the other tires that had little traction, as soon as the car was jacked up enough. This only managed to slightly bend the frame where the jack point is, and got me no closer to getting the chain off (at least I'm lucky this did not happen while I had the wheel off). When I went to see caltrans again, they didn't even have a quick way to get me a tow truck (no cell phone coverage of course).
So, I gave it another shot, and tried to reach for the stuck chain the another way around (it looked like it was stuck on something inside the car, that I couldn't see), and was able to feed the chain bit in enough for it to came back out finally. 5mn later, I was dirty from having layed on the road in the snow/mud, a bit cold from having been outside for almost an hour in my before dry and clean street clothes, but back on my way home (that was after having left soon after 16:00, got home around 20:45.

What I learned: my Z chains are almost impossible to put on for one person, and need to be taken out very carefully. Obviously, my car is also not ideal for snow use, although I kind of knew that already :) Oh, and don't stop for pictures, just keep going :)

The rest of the picts are here , and the Visible track of my measly day at Sierra @ Tahoe , of which I'll paste a sample below:

Labels: snow

I just found this web site with Garmin GPS Maps of most to all Ski Resorts in the US. For the snow sport/GPS geek cross, it's a really nice thing, see the Mountain Dynamics Web Site .

Then, you can also upload your tracks and get a pretty good summary of what you did in a day. See the Visual representation of the GPS track of my measly day at Sierra @ Tahoe . While you should click on the preceeding link, I'll paste a sample below:

Labels: snow

While the timing was far from ideal, just after having come back from Fiji, and having had our offer on our new house, accepted, we got a nice storm, and an opportunity for a lot of fresh powder in Tahoe.
It was hard to pass up, especially as Bob was going there for 3 days (including the monday after the storm with fresh snow and nice weather). Unfortunately, Jennifer wasn't able to make it, but I was, and the snow was indeed pretty darn good :)
The weather was pretty horrible for the first two days though, blizzard condidionts sometimes, many lifts closed due to wind, but what was open was enough to get great snow if you were willing to ride blind from time to time :)
Monday, the storm was over, and we got a bit more snow from the previous night, along with nice weather. Many people skipped work and stayed, so the powder got ridden quickly, but Bob and I got the 10th chair up the wall, and I got to ride down the wall in powder for the first time at kirkwood. It was pretty nice :)

The wind on top was really horrid




I stopped around 15:00 the first day, I was cold, wet, and frozen, and the last top lift had just closed




Day 3 was great weather, just too many people were there

You can look at the rest of the pictures

Labels: snow

Jennifer and I had only gotten a short stay in Mammoth when we were able to fly there for a half day 2 days ago. I had really wanted to go back since then, and in a faster plane this time. In a Cirrus SR22, it took 1.2h of flight time in each direction.
We flew there saturday morning, picked up the rental car in Mammoth, and were on the slopes by 10:30, in time for the icy snow to be nice corn snow.

my trusty copilot, at work :)


Hello Mammoth, we're landing and we'll be back in a minute

The snow coverage was still pretty good considering, although considering the warm temperatures, it's probably going to melt fast now.
I took Jennifer around all the lifts and the entire mountain over the two days we were there. As long as we stuck with the sun during the day, the snow was actually fairly decent.

The weather was so nice, that a bunch of college students crowded the mountain in bikinis and swimmers, even at 11,000ft (3000m), which was definitely fun to see. I don't even think they got too cold :)

For the first day, we ended up doing the side of the mountain on the side
of Canyon Lodge.

While the base lodge is a clusterfuck to park at (their parking lot is a joke, and you have to park down the street, quite a ways away), the main lodge itself was nice, and it had the famous Mammoth of course.

We ended up not parking by the main lodge, and by Mill's Café, which is midway on the mountain, and by the Stump Alley/Gold Rush Express lifts going on both sides of the mountain. When the sun allowed, we checked out the other side of the mountain and the back side for our second day.

More pictures of Mammoth Mountain
By sunday late afternoon, we had covered a combined 80 miles of terrain (120km) and used all the lifts that went to terrain (we skipped a few baby lifts).
I was pooped, so we drove back to the airport around 15:30, and had another 1.2h flight with a few nice views of Mammoth on the way home. We were back home after 2h45 from when we left Mammoth (which included rental car return, loading/unloading the plane, and driving to and from the airport), so it wasn't too bad considering, and definitely beat the otherwise 6.5h drive.
And if you'd like it, here's the GPS track of the two days in Mammoth .

More pictures of the flight to and from mammoth .

Labels: flying , snow