Marc's Public Blog - Skiing / Snowboarding / Snow

nice to park sheltered

and the studio was quite nice

big dump overnight

After getting lucky about crossing, the dump ended up being even bigger than forecast. Forecast was 18 inches or so, and we got 24 to 32 inches (I think when they lose the dipstick in the snow, they call it 32 ;) ).

The problem is that kirkwood really didn't have their shit together. Some of their staff wasn't there so solitude didn't open until late. Cornice only opened at 10:15, the wall later as usual, and the wall is still half broken so it can only carry two people per seat. Cornice in turn was down 1H for maintenance in the afternoon.

waiting, and waiting, and waiting...

finally, some pow!

But despite the lift issues, the runs were pretty freaking awesome.

nice tracks, just being careful about not getting stuck

it went deeper than that, but didn't want to go there, since getting out was hard :)

Unfortunately, I didn't point my camera down during my runs, so you don't get to see the snow past my knees when I was bouncing in pow, but just believe me, it was nice :)

Palisades was really nice, but not getting stuck at the bottom was key

We just got our clean car from the parking lot and got down to the road just in case for Caltrans to open it 5-10mn later (a bit late, but good enough for us).

First run off Cornice:

And another one:

Here are the snow days stats for Our Day At Kirkwood.

The next morning, Heavenly reported 18 inches and kirkwood 20 to 24 inches. We figured 18 inches was good enough and we'd be better off skiing the trees at Heavenly than fighting the crowds that were likely to have gone to Kirkwood.
Well, Heavenly was ok but not great or epic unfortunately. The asshole who reported 18 inches probably also told his wife that he was 18 inches... Maybe they put the dipstick sideways at Mott Canyon.

looked promising

yes, we're going to ride this today :)

In some places under Sky Express, it felt like 6-10 inches with ice under and in others it was maybe a foot.

On one of my first runs, I rode a very big rock, and it put a pretty deep and wide gash in my board. Riding flat sections after that sucked ass due to drag:

Doesn't look like much, but slowed me down a *lot*

The first 2 runs in Mott were pretty nice but not stellar. It was a good day, but disappointing compared to what it could have done in other places like Kirkwood. Bummer...

Waiting for the gate

Mott got tracked out after one run. IT also didn't look so deep

At least the view was nice

First run down Mott, gold run style:

Nice little run with Arturo down Aries Woods:

At least Heavenly had the nice views going for itself still:

The day wasn't bad, but it just wasn't anywhere close to epic, which was a bit disappointing. Oh well...

Here are the snow days stats for Our Day At Heavenly.

plane was quite loaded, getting the snowboards in was 'fun' :)

Mammoth 1

Mammoth 2

Mammoth 3

Mammoth 4

Mammoth 5

The conditions at Mammoth were typical spring: a mix of icy, corn, and slush. The second day was actually pretty icy due to some pretty strong winds which kept the temperatures low and prevented much the ice from melting.

Honestly, the conditions weren't great and Mammoth would totally rock on a powder day. It's however unlikely that I could fly there just around a storm without getting stuck there, but I plan to try one day :)

Anyway, Arturo had a great time discovering Mammoth with snow, and as a piece of advise don't play the "name this peak" game with him: you will lose flat out :)

We covered most of the mountain, except some really boring/icy parts (although we did do some other very icy parts too :) ).

All pictures are georeferrenced. You can just click on them to see their location on a map.

we saw the Mammoth skiing later :)

nice view, but a sucky icy ride down

Cloud 9 Express was shut down but we got on top of it

Here are the snow days stats for Day1 and Day2.

Here are a couple of runs off chair 23:

The flight back was interesting: we had 50mph winds on the peak of Mammoth and wind was due east, which meant potentially sizeable mountain waves over the Sierras and we were on the wrong side of them (mountain waves can smack your plane down much faster than you can fly out of them).
Mountain Waves, how to recognize and deal with them are subjects of entire books, but on that day they were hard to see due to low moisture (no clouds to give clues) and the wind was strong enough that they could potentially cause up and downdrafts of 1000fpm or more (note that in our case we were flying against the wind, which is much harder).

Anyway, I called the FSS folks (flight weather forecast), and watched a few planes crossing the Sierras without being smacked on the ground, so I felt confident enough to go up and try crossing back to go home (with a backup plan of coming back if things looked bad).
We first headed north towards Mono lake for a scenic flight and so that we could come back via Yosemite and lose the "name the peak" game with Arturo :)
I was able to pick up some nice updrafts from the mountain wave while flying up hwy 395 and with 15,000ft of altitude in the bank, it felt reasonable to start crossing. I basically was pitched up flying at 90kts and the downdraft was gentle enough that it allowed us to mostly maintain altitude (it would go up and down 500ft, which was reasonable).

The flight back made for some nice pictures:

the nice crater by mono lake, much nicer as seen from the sky

lenticular/rotor cloud visible on the leeward side of Tahoe

not quite maintaining altitude with a good pitch up and 45kt headwind

Despite the strong headwind over the Sierras and the scenic detour, the flight was 1h45. It was quite nice to be on my couch, stuff unpacked, having dinner and looking at my pictures a mere 3 hours after we left the slopes.

It was already 10:30 by the time I made it to the first lift and by the time I got to the top, most powder had been well tracked out by hordes of local who had come that morning. Fairly disappointing :(

The snow was till good, but I sure wasn't swimming in powder like I was hoping. Later that day, the sun got overcast and the melted powder started icing up. Very sad... (and due to the fact that Squaw is way too low altitude-wise).

nice and sunny in the morning, melted the powder

even the back was pretty skied out

Track for Day 1

The next day, I just used to explore the edges of Squaw had had not gone to, espespecially as the main front sucks anyway since you're funneled back to a bunch of flat sections.

Riding Silverado was interesting: the terrain was very challenging since it was easy to get cliffed out and ski patrol didn't go out of their way to mark that side of the mountain. There lots of spots with slopes beyond 60 degrees but leading down to a mixture of ice and rocks :-/ A couple of times I ended up in a not so good spot and had to carefully get out of it.

Thankfully the snow did not ice up on the second day and I got to see most of the edges of Squaw. The one lowpoint was that the bolt holding the back plate of my NXT flow binding came out again, and I wasted close to 45mn doing a field repair. Thankfully I actually had the right tools and a set of the very special screws and bolts required (so I'm not carrying that heavy backpack for nothing :) ).

I took the line down between the gondola and cable car. A bit low on snow, but more scenic and different

Track for Day 2

we got the penguin plane :)

Denver's got it down for skiiers and snowboarders :)

Arturo got us to Silverthorne around 02:30, in the snow, uphill both ways and stuck behind a row of snow plows (actually they did have 4 snow plows blocking the entire freeway while cleaning the road).

All the pictures are geotagged, so clicking on them will bring you to a page like this one which will show you were the picture was taken.

BreckenRidge

After a few hours of sleep, we painfully got up and headed for BreckenRidge. Unfortunately half of Denver hand their brothers had done the same due to the fresh snow and it took over an hour to drive a few miles, get a parking spot in an off resort lot, and then a bus to the gondola.
I think it was noon by the time we had made it to Imperial Peak (and unfortunately we lost Jennifer in the process who had trouble with the T-Bar).

Jennifer's beloved T-Bar :)

Imperial Bowl from the near 13kft peak

Probably one of the Highest Peaks with a Ski Lift to in the Continental US

BreckenRidge was fun, but just too many people that day, and quite frankly still a bit low on snow.

Nice Powder Run with Arturo off the T-Bar:

Here are the stats, gpx track and map for Day1 at BreckenRidge.

Vail

Pretty

Aspen Trees

The whole crew

Suwei and Karl nicely invited us to their condo that evening, by Keystone, so what we could just walk to the lift the next day.

Nice Ridge run with everyone:

Farther down that run where Jennifer runs into me and I go through some nice trees after that:

Nice Tree Run with Arturo:

Here are the stats, gpx track and map for Day2 at Vail.

Keystone

After another 5-ish hours of sleep (I don't sleep well at altitude), and not much more for Jennifer, we got our butts off the condo and to the nearest Keystone lift.

Arturo, we can't tell it's you with your mask :)

Now you see how I take my GoPro HD videos :)

Snowman, or something :)

Keystone, while a bit smaller, was still quite nice to ride in my opinion, especially with the fresh powder.
Conditions were quite nice, and I did a fair amount of tree runs. The forests however had just enough snow, and it was easy to catch a hidden tree trunk or branch and fall. The trees were also fairly dense, making riding quite challenging, but I like challenges :)

Nice little run with Karl, Arturo and Jennifer, finishing up in the trees:

This was one of my last tree runs, when my brain was definitely slowing down, and I missed a turn in front of a tree, ending up on my back, head downhill and my board stuck behind the tree :)

Here are the stats, gpx track and map for Day3 at Keystone.

This was definitely a great deal of fun, we lucked out on snow, and big thanks to Arturo for taking care of most of the organization, and Suwei and Karl for hosting us and showing us around the slopes.

The day was pretty good and it wasn't crowded :)

Portion of a nice little run off the wave:

We had a nice evening in the cabin:

The 2nd day, I rode with James and Jim in the morning. You can see my GoPro camera on my helmet and Jennifer was able to come up with Johannes. We were able to ride together until she got tired (it was her first day of the season).

by sister's chute left of the wall chair

at the top of my way out there palisades run

Jennifer riding

Portion of an easy powder run with Jennifer:

Here are the stats and map for Day1 (shows a few nice powder rides on palisades and devil's draw) and Day2 when I rode with Jennifer and did a couple of "out there" palisades runs.

We didn't get quite there at opening time due to a screw in one of the tires, but by re-inflating a few times we made it there and back.

Jim's trusty snow prius with spike spiders

Unfortunately, they only had 5 ski patrols which was not enough to open anything other than cornice (not counting sentinel bowl or of course palisades). The wall stayed closed, which was a shame considering some good terrain that would have been nice to hit.
However that meant that when I finally arrived with my ticket (which took 45mn to get due to kirkwood having their computerized pass processing all messed up that day) around 10:30, cornice hadn't even opened yet, which was a bit sad for Kirkwood, but convenient for us :)

Weather saturday was pretty miserable but the winds were as bad as scheduled. It was still cold and wet though.

we had powder, even if it didn't feel that deep

this is why they had to do avalanche control

That evening we thankfully didn't have to brave the storm to go anywhere and were able to Chill at our coworker's shared condo (thanks guys!).

On sunday, it snowed all day too, but the weather wasn't as whiteout and wet. Good powder was to be had too, although it didn't feel very deep (it packed quickly).

overnight snow, not so bad :)

this guy means business :)

The "hightlight" was when I like many others went maybe slightly out of bounds since ski patrol was too underpowered to open more terrain and I ended up on top of an unmarked cliff that wasn't really covered well enough yet.

mmmh, wrong time of the season to come down here

but I did jump down because I couldn't get safely back up

while it was a scary jump, I was able to get down in mostly soft snow without problems. On hard packed snow, I would have hurt myself though.

A big thanks to my coworker Andrew and cabinmates for hosting us in their shared kirkwood cabin and Jim for driving us there and back in his trusty Prius.

Here are the stats and map for Day1 and Day2. For Day #2, I rode cornice all day after it opened and went a lot more on the sides for some unriden snow. Too bad I couldn't get up the wall for more powder goodness...