Jennifer and I drove up with chains right after our easter party at Brian's and it was pretty deserted. Chain control was honor system style and we drove past the supposed chain control past Dew Drop and made it all the way to Ham Station. By then, we kind of hurried to Carson Spur and ended up crossing around 20:20 when Caltrans closed it by 20:50. Pfew!
nice to park sheltered
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.