Snow started a bit late this year. The first real snow started when I was leaving for Xmas, so I missed that. As luck would have it during a mere 4 days I was home between a France and New Zealand trip, we got a nice storm system that hit Tahoe. The storm was tricky, changed a lot, initially dumped less snow at Kirkwood than planned, and stranded a lot of people in Lake Tahoe on sunday night as the roads closed for the night.
Day #1 was a bit busy, but not terribly so. Sadly only 6" in the morning, but more fell during the day:
we were in line at Cornice
but the wall ended up opening first
cornice got a bit busy when it opened
KW tried to stay open as long as they good despite hellish winds and terrible viz at the tops, and eventually had to close around 15:00. Not a big deal, we had had enough fun by then
Day #2 got a bunch of snow overnight, but it was a bit wet (almost sierra cement), and because both roads to KW were closed. As a result, KW opened very late as the snow was dangerous and they were short staffed since somehow they still let some of their critical staff drive back to South Lake before a storm that is likely to segment KW. In the end, they only opened at 11:30 which was kind of pathetic, but they made up for it by opening Cornice just before noon, and the Wall arount 14:00, which was really good, especially given the very few crowds:
not really crowded
that viz was still better than the viz from the previous afternoon
by 14:30, we finally got to see the sky for a short time, while enjoying 5-6 runs off the wall
Day #2 was definitely good once things opened, especially with so few people on the mountain.
