Marc's Public Blog - Snow

Plea To Caltrans: Improve Your Communication

2011-03-27T15:00:00Z

Dear Caltrans,

This post is about your work around Tahoe, and what you can do to improve. First, I need to state that Caltrans folks who clear the roads day and night in sometimes horrid conditions, have a very hard job. In my experience with Tahoe, they actually do a good job with keeping roads open in bad conditions with the resources they have.

Yet, they could definitely do better. By that, I don't mean work harder, I'm pretty sure they already work hard during the big snow storms (especially the ones we had this year), I mean by improving communication.

In a nutshell, as much as you do a good job with roads, you do quite poorly with communication. This is partly why I wrote my "Tahoe Road Info for SR88 (kirkwood), US50 (South Lake Tahoe), and I80 (North Lake Tahoe) or making caltrans road reports more liveable" page. But my page is just making the online caltrans info a bit more useful, it does not fix underlying problems with how you communicate (or don't communicate in many cases).

Why the goals below are worth following

1. By increasing the frequency and standardizing the format of online updates, Caltrans could improve road safety by redirecting travelers towards the safest roads where Caltrans has the largest crew working.

2. A good example of providing realtime updates to a time sensitive real world situation is: http://www.google.com/crisisresponse/japanquake2011.html#map. This includes visualization and real-time social updates (if you had a twitter hash tag, then some drivers would probably update this info in real time for you!).

3. Your audience increasingly uses the desktop internet and mobile devices to get information, and this peaks during winter driving times (700x growth from baseline!).

4. Improve communication and increase driver safety, as per your mission statement on http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/paffairs/about/mission.htm

5. Not that your main goal should be to have a better web site that other states like Utah, or Nevada, but being far behind them is obviously a sign that things should be better. See for example:

http://511.commuterlink.utah.gov/tats.web.report

http://www.safetravelusa.com/nv/?map=Sacramento

6. Put an end to road user frustration and anger that were avoidable.

You don't want drivers to drive 2-3H around Carson Spur because they didn't know you'd actually open Carson Spur at 07:30 after having worked on it during the night.

You don't want for one of your employees to plain forget to change the road status for 88 to show that Carson Pass had re-opened at 05:00 that morning (road change status was delayed by 3.5 hours and too late for those going to kirkwood that day, causing monetary loss to kirkwood and frustration for users who had spent hours driving to South Lake just to go to Kirkwood).

You also don't want not to tell road users you're planning to open 80 in about 1h after having closed it for 8H, causing some to drive towards 50 (a long drive around), just to close 50 at Myers for 5 hours without even making any mention of this on your road status updates (another of your employees plain forgot to update the status that day it seems): one of my friends got home 6+ hours later than necessary, exhausted, just because you didn't provide him with useful and timely information (and of course, such a driver is much more likely to get into an accident as a result, and cause one of those roads to be closed further)

So, how do you get there?

Target Goals

Let me summarize my suggestions here:
1. Report tentative/planned status changes.
2. Report actual road status changes as quickly as possible.
3. Maintain a history of status changes, in addition to current status report.
4. Standard format for status reports (i.e. computer parsable) and a graphical map with summary view.
5. A blog like page where you tell us about the challenges you're facing with your job, like why you can't plow a road because of conditions or because your equipment is tied up elsewhere (that's just for extra points)

So, let's start with my #1 suggestion:

Caltrans: you should announce tentative road changes, and report road changes as quickly as practical, and reliably

To give you credit, I've seen two instances where you did over this ski season:

Once, I've seen you display on a sign on 88 'Carson Spur will close at 7:30' but that was not available online. In the end, due to bad snow, you actually closed at 7:00 and we didn't make it. Mind you, I'm not mad, I actually want you to give out forecast info even if it turns out not to be fully right (in that case, some cars did get avalanched on and had to be dug out of the snow, not exactly Caltrans' fault).

Now, I also have to state that that same day, when we drove around to Carson Pass and their sign at 50 and 89 said 'Carson Pass closed, no ETA' when you were working on it and it opened 30mn later.

Actually another time, I remember that you posted 'Spur will close at 13:00 for avalance control'. Ok, you did actually close it at least 15mn early so we didn't get out of kirkwood as a result, but eh, at least you tried.

Now, let's look at a sample of the many instances of what you've done badly with communication:

In my Carson Pass example above, we lost $300 for a condo at kirkwood we were not able to get to (we turned back and stayed in South Lake) when Caltrans was actually working on opening the Pass and the sign gave strong impressions that your guys had gone home for the night (it was midnight and snowing hard, so it wasn't an unreasonable conclusion).

In just one 10 day period, I noted 5 different examples where the Caltrans web site failed to note some road changes, or did it very late, 4 of them were just in 3 consecutive days (!).

Sunday March 20: hwy 50 was closed about 5H at Myers for avalanche control and maybe accidents, I have a friend who was stuck there and waited the entire time. It was NEVER announced on the caltrans web site.

Thursday March 24th: 50 closed at Twin Bridges around 23:00 due to an accident and was closed for almost 2H. It took 50mn for the Caltrans website to show that traffic was being held (not as bad, but still, 50mn is pretty slow).

Friday, March 25th: Carson pass on 88 apparently opened around 05:00 but was marked closed on the Caltrans web site until 08:30 (!). This really screwed kirkwood over because people went to Heavenly thinking the road was closed, when it actually had opened a long time ago. Caltrans eventually fixed the road status after phone calls from Kirkwood trying to get you to fix it. That's pretty sad.

Saturday, March 26th: Caltrans did a great job and opened Carson Spur at 07:30, but there was no way to know you were working on it. All the people going to Kirkwood that morning were not likely to just drive to the Spur on the off chance that it might magicallly open without having Caltrans at least give a hint you were working on it (the Spur has been closed for 3 consecutive days 2 or 3 times this season, so we're unlikely to just drive to it when it's closed now).

Saturday, March 26th, still, Carson Pass actually closed around 08:30 due to 2 Subarus spinning out (I was there). It was closed for almost 90mn, and there again there never was any notice on your status web page. Quite unfortunate to say the least.

Caltrans, you work hard on keeping roads open, or re-opening them, but I beg you: you *really* need to communicate what you're doing.
Of course, you can't be everywhere all the time, use us, drivers, on roads that have cell service at least (won't help with hwy88, but at least it will for others), and use us to report up to date problems, accidents and road closures online quicker than you can when applicable.

Caltrans blog for each road

Here's my suggestion to you Caltrans: for each road you should have a blog-like page announcing what your plans are for a given road. You obviously have guys who figure out whether they're going to try and re-open Carson Spur on 88, or how long you think you'll keep it open. You also know if 50 and 80 are in such a bad shape that you had to send all your equipment there and therefore you won't be able to work on 88 anytime soon. So:
Blog it
I'm not trying to get you to go social because it's cool. I don't care much for facebook or twitter, but please find a way, any way, to let us know what your intentions are. I'm not asking that you tell us that you'll reopen the Spur at 08:22 tomorrow morning, I'm just asking for:

tell us if the road or conditions are so bad that it's unsafe for you to work.

tell us that your equipment for 88 had to be diverted towards 50 and you won't be able to reopen 88 anytime soon if that is the case (I'm assuming that's the only valid reason for 88 to be closed for 3 days in a row during a bad storm. If that's not the case, save us from assumptions, and tell us the actual reasons).

do your best to tell us that you're planning on closing 50 or 88 at a certain time for pre-emptive avalanche control when you have such a plan, or for 88/Spur, just to tell us when you think you'll be closing it for the night, or even over a day during bad storms.

tell us each time if a road is closed for snow or an accident (sometimes you do, thanks). If you have any tentative ETA, give it (you konw whether you're waiting for a snowplow or a tow truck and whether they're 30mn away or 2h away). We're not going to hate you if you get the ETA wrong, but you'll help us big time if you say "we're plowing and hope to reopen within 2H", or "two cars have to be dugged out, all tow trucks are already busy, it will take a while". Just give us all information at your fingertips and your best guess. A wrong guess is better than no info at all.

for heaven's sakes, if you got your crews up at 04:00 to reopen Carson Pass, or you have crews working through the night trying to reopen Carson Spur for the saturday morning crowd, then tell us you're doing that so that people can decide to chance a drive to the Spur and wait it out if it's not quite open yet. You close the Spur for 3 days at a time sometimes, so you can't expect that we'll just get up at 04:00 and drive up there on the off chance that you might open it if you don't tell us that you're actually planning on doing so.

Similarly if you opened Carson Pass at 05:00, don't have one person in an office not doing their job ruin it for all of us by not posting until 3h30 later (unless it's a problem where it never even got radioded to your office after it was done). Example from this case:
IS REOPENED FROM KIRKWOOD (AMADOR CO) TO 5 MI WEST OF PICKETTS JCT (ALPINE CO) AT 0828 HRS ON 3/25/11

Also, the reason why I mentioned a blog-like page, is because it's worthwhile for us to know what you've done in the last days or the last week. It's even useful when you close a road to know how long ago you closed it: for instance when you closed 50 for avalanche control as I was driving up, it was useful for me to know (through my own page, not yours), that you had closed it 1H ago and guess that it'd probably reopen 2H after it was closed, which it did.

I did that part for you by scraping your web page and keeping history for me and others, but you really should do this yourselves. See: http://marc.merlins.org/snow/roadinfo/sr88

More user friendly as well as computer parsable status reports

Another reason why I created this page http://marc.merlins.org/snow/tahoe_caltrans.shtml is because how are we supposed to know where "Peddler Hill" or "Nayak" (really Nyak) are? Telling us a road status between points that most road users don't actually know, isn't useful.
Would it be so hard to give us a graphical map like what Nevada DOT tries to do by parsing your free form text data: http://www.safetravelusa.com/nv/?map=Sacramento ?
I personally have 4 months worth of data from you, and you can tell it's free form text entered by a human. There are some patterns but really it seems to depend on the operator and it's nothing that's easy to parse for computer for any kind of automation. As result, Nevada DOT has even showed incorrect road status for California on the graphical map because they couldn't parse your data properly.

What should you do? Well, I recommend that part of your reports be made out of drop downs so that the format is guaranteed to be the same at all times, and then the operator can add free form text that is useful to humans at the end without compromoizing the computer parsable section at the beginning. As an example to others, those are examples I've seen:

IS CLOSED 1.5 MI WEST OF KYBURZ
IS CLOSED FROM TWIN BRIDGES TO MEYERS
IS CLOSED TO WESTBOUND TRAFFIC AT 4.8 MI WEST OF STRAWBERRY
IS CLOSED FROM ECHO SUMMIT TO MEYERS
IS CLOSED TO EASTBOUND TRAFFIC FROM COLFAX (PLACER) TO THE NEVADA STATE LINE

So, we have 'AT X', 'From X to Y', 'TO traffic AT X', and even 'TO traffic FROM X TO Y', and probably a few more. Then a road can be CLOSED or have 'TRAFFIC HELD', which quite frankly are the same in real life, but you seem to use one or the other depending on the road for some reason.
Also sometimes you send a 'CLOSED AT 21:22' and then replace it with 'CLOSED' 5mn later. Sometimes you never send the 'AT XX:YY', so computer algorithms can't do much with data that is randomly missing.

My point is that all this could be simplified and be made more consistent. Please do what you can there.

Conclusion

Thanks for doing a lot to keep our roads open as much as possible during bad weather. Your Tahoe staff does do pretty incredible work. But please: let us know what you're doing, and maybe even give us some insight about how you're working on the roads and what you're dealing with.

This was a busy year, especially for March

Thanks,
Marc

Another Big Storm Headed for Tahoe

2011-03-25T15:00:00Z

Jennifer and I had just come back from Montana when the previous big storm hit Tahoe (we're talking 50-60 inches of snow over 3 days), so we ended up sitting that one out to recover.

However, when another similarly sized storm arrived the following week, it was hard to miss, especially as such big storms don't happen even once on some years.

We went with Martin and Matt in their chalet in South Lake. The drive on 50 on thursday evening was a bit gruesome because we left just a little bit too late and were delayed by an accident that happened 10mn ahead of us. In the end, we only got there past 01:00 instead of just after 23:00 :-

they need to clean that van :)

Martin's Subaru

Mmmh, the plow guy came that afternoon, but by the evening the driveway was unsuable already.

What can I say, it was a pretty good day, even with just one top lift open :)
This was a really sweet 'just my tracks' run in palisades:

and here is a mashup of other bits from the day:

The next morning, Caltrans had opened Carson Pass at 05:00 but failed to update their record, so it was marked closed until 08:30 :( That's a major fail from Caltrans and almost caused us to go to Heavenly (which sucked that day since everything was closed there).

In the end, we got to Kirkwood a bit past 10:00 and ended up riding Cornice all day, which was more than enough for that day :)

A quick summary of day 2:

The next morning, we went for Kirkwood earlier, but a couple of cars spun out on Carson Pass, closing it for another 90mn. Had we left 10mn earlier, we'd have made it... We were on the slopes around 10:30, which was just around the time that the Wall opened, so I was able to get a couple of rides off it, and they were pretty stellar :)

waiting in line again...

yes, it was snowing still...

a little bit of ice hanging :)

kirkwood staff was shoveling the snow at the top of the wall so that we didn't get stuck

Saturday was a really good day, except for the fact that wind closed the wall, so I only got to ride on it twice. This enticed me to stay sunday to actually ride the mountain that was still closed.

Jennifer went home saturday night because she had commitments on sunday (also she unfortunately hurt her knee by falling off the lift downloading on ice at the top of cornice). I spent the night with Jim and Matt who nicely hosted me at their condo in kirkwood.
Sunday morning, Arturo and Bill who had been stuck at Heavenly the previous day, were able to make it to kirkwood, so we met up.

a couple of skiers climbed on the roof and jumped out. Sweet!

5ft+ of snow wasn't for play, they really had it.

when the wall finally opened, there was a little bit of a line :)

come on Arturo, don't be scared, it's just a cornice ;)

the ride home on sunday turned out to be uneventful

A quick summary of day 3 with Arturo and Bill:

Thanks to Martin, Matt, Matt, and Jim for driving/hosting us. See more images for Another Big Storm Headed for Tahoe

Big Sky and Moonlight Basin, Montana

2011-03-13T16:00:00Z

Jennifer's sister and brother in law nicely gave us an open invitation to stay at their cabin by Big Sky, and we finally took them up on it.

United had the sole direct flight from SFO that left at some stupid ass time in the morning, ruining a night of sleep and a whole day for nothing (likely the only takeoff/landing timeslot they could get for a small pond jumper). We did however elect to take that since connecting flights take an extra 4H if you want to make a safe connection where your snowboard is likely to arrive too.

After loading up on groceries, the drive to big sky was a scenic 1H to the very nice cabin. After resting for the rest of the day, we went to Big Sky the next morning.
When we got there, they were all proud of the 8 inches they had just gotten of the last 2 days and their 105" base. I obviously didn't complain about snow, but I couldn't help but smile at how this doesn't qualify as a dump or a powder day in Tahoe :) At the time I write this, kirkwood in Tahoe got over 120" of snow in the last 10 days with 2 storms that delivered over 50" in just 2 days each.

Case in point, the kirkwood page had 145-160 inches of snow for the current storm :)

Kirkwood Snow Stats for 2011/03/27:

Last 48 Hours	64-70"
Storm Total	145-159"
Last 7 Days	164-183"

Seasonal Total Range	691-713"
Base Depth	229- 273"

Anyway, back to big sky, outside of the stupid early time we had to get up at, we had a good flight. The airport view after landing ain't bad :) and the drive to Big Sky from Boseman was scenic:

nice condos

it was nice and spacious

The next morning, we went to Big Sky, it was nice and sunny with a few inches of freshies left over:

line to the tram was ridiculous (1h)

did I mention that snow coverage was poor? :)

to make extra money, they also had ziplining

The next day, we went to check out the neighboring resort: Moonlight Basin (both resorts share a common area and you cna purchase a bundled ticket to ski from one side to the other). They were a bit more basic and cheaper, but they still had some interesting terrain, although the amounts of it were more limited :)

I found this hut by chance in a middle of a tree run

their best lift was actually uphill from the closest lift, so you had to hike there

the terrain from headwall was much more fun

picture from the peak

their trees tended to be more dense than the Tahoe ones.

The 3rd day, we actually got some fresh snow. It was unfortunately too warm, so the bottom of Big Sky was very wet and the snow felt like ice, but when the top opened and we got there, it was better (not great, but much better) and made for some good riding until the end of the day:

And after a good 3rd day, it was time to go home after another nice scenic drive back to the airport:

lower octane gas at altitude for non turbo cars

All it all, it was good fun to check out the 'biggest skiing domain in America', too bad that the coverage was so low (my brand new board got scratched up).
A big thanks to Eva and Gordon for letting us use their nice cabin. See more images for Big Sky and Moonlight Basin, Montana

Work Tahoe Ski Trip

2011-03-03T16:00:00Z

We had a ski trip in my group from work, and went to South Lake Tahoe just before a small snow storm, which gave for some nice snow for our two days at Heavenly.

City of Myers

South Lake Tahoe

Deserts from the Party

The next morning, we took the gondola to go the top (thankfully Sky was opened), and we had a nice couple of bluebird days:

Heavenly does have nice views

Pow!

All for me! :)

View of Nevada on the other side

I love those views

Heavenly did improve their signage, especially for snowboarders:

Warning, snow can be cold. Oh, and you can die :)

Thanks Heavenly for warning snowboarders about the long traverse at the bottom

Killabrew has a nice view on Nevada though

But did I mention that Heavenly always had snow problems? This was off Cascades, WTF?

But eh, despite my harping on Heavenly, I had some really good tree skiing between Sky and the top of Tamarack (if you knew how to get around the rocks). See more images for Work Tahoe Ski Trip

Riding a Storm at Kirkwood

2011-02-25T16:00:00Z

Jim's Spider Spikes got us over Carson Spur way before it closed

Friday morning looked like an epic day, but unfortunately winds shut all the lifts down. In the end, coop organized for a Cat to give us a few rides up solitude. Wheather was pretty bad though.

Next morning was full storm

Coop giving us a briefing on cat skiing

Stood in line 1h to get a ride up

Cat finally showed up

Next morning was much better, a great bluebird day. Unfortunately that was on a saturday, so it got busy and tracked out quickly.

Pow!

I went a bit further off the wall to get the snow

Backside was pretty too

Got way by the ski line and ended up on top of chair 4

Third day was another nice bluebird, but less powder to find by then:

People watching the big skiier contest

Crazy skiiers going down the cirque

See more images for Riding a Storm at Kirkwood

Catching the early part of a big storm in Tahoe

2011-02-16T16:00:00Z

After looking at the forecast, it was clear that tuesday would get the start of a big storm, so a few coworkers and I headed to Tahoe, along with Jennifer.

decent amount of snow for the first day

Matthew's house in South Lake Tahoe

While wednesday and thurday were supposed to be the best day, the storm was a bit late and wednesday was just windy, shutting many lifts down, but only had a foot of snow or so (although plenty fell during that day).
We opted for not going to Kirkwood and went to Heavenly instead. This was the right call sicne Kirkwood only ran a couple of baby lifts and had both its roads closed for quite a while. Heavenly wasn't great since not a lot was open, but it was good enough for the day:

visibility wasn't great, but it was workable

there were a few hours of light

but it was cold, this was just melted snow caught in my goatee

snow was still pretty deep by the end of the day

The next day, we went to Kirkwood which nicely opened Cornice, on time even. Snow was quite good, but conditions were pretty bad. It was cold, visibility was really 0 at some times (I got off the lift at cornice and had to literally look for the dropoff to get back down. I just didn't take many pictures because there wasn't much to see, and my right hand was freezing when I was taking it out of my glove (I actually got some amount of fingertip frostbite with blisters that are still healing 2 days later).

that's probably the best vis we got all day

Snow was good, but it was difficult to enjoy. Unfortunately we had to get back thursday when the best day before the weekend crowds was definitely friday. Darn... Oh well, what we got was still nice.

A big thanks to Matthew for getting us there and back in record time in his WRX Sti with snow tires. See more images for Catching the early part of a big storm in Tahoe

Seeking kirkwood powder during 3 day weekend

2010-12-18T16:00:00Z

The forecast called for a big storm, so we made plans to go to kirkwood and stay there for a couple of days.

car was packed to the rim :)

Unfortunately, we got to Carson Spurr 1h after they closed it, which would end up being for over 3 days (although we didn't know that at the time). Some cars stayed and hoped that they would re-open, but that never happened. Unfortunately Caltrans sucks at broadcasting their plans: it would be really nice if they would just say "we're unlikely to re-open the Spurr for a few days", or "we're working on Carson Pass, we'll reopen ASAP" (vs "conditions are just too unsafe, go to bed and come back tomorrow morning when we'll try agian").
Anyway, we did a 3H+ drive around to Carson Pass just to find that it was closed too with no ETA for re-opening. In the end, it did open about 30 to 45mn after we were there, but since Caltrans can't be bothered to give any useful forward looking information, and it was pushing midnight and a 8.5H drive, we went back to South Lake and slept there, foregoing the first night in our condo.

the caltrans guy just made a snow roadblock

The next morning, we drove from South Lake and the conditions were pretty good although the snow was wet (temps were too high):

It snowed a bit that night:

digging the car out and getting back to a road, was 'fun'

Kirkwood opened 20mn and closed due to high winds, heavy snow and high avalanche danger. Snow sucked anyway.

We waited the day out in the lodge, it was just sleeting outside :(

Snow was bad and it was impossible to get out of parking spots, this poor guy had his bumper ripped by the snow while being towed.

We stayed in a nice 2BR in the tower that afternoon/night

Sunday ended up being a throwawy day, but thankfully we had made some plans to extend our stay to monday for the dryer colder storm: On Monday morning, there were almost 2ft of dry snow on top of the previous day's crud. That was a welcome change. Kirkood took forever to open its 4 lifts on the front side of the mountain though, they really are having issues doing timely snow patrol and getting their lifts to run reliably and timely.

lift line for solitude, the first lift to open at 10:00.

Pow

Here was my first run off Cornice, when they finally got the lift running at 14:00-ish (yes, that's late...)

Monday had really nice conditions though, when lifts finally opened, it was quite nice.
3 days later, Carson Spurr is still closed though... See more images for Seeking kirkwood powder during 3 day weekend

Real time Caltrans road updates for Tahoe and graphical reporting points for hwy 88, 89, 50 and i80

2010-12-05T16:00:00Z

Anyone going to Tahoe and checking road status from Caltrans knows how 1980's their system is (manually entered ALL CAPS 6 BIT ASCII UPDATES, including spelling mistakes on reporting points).
I've also found it frustrating at times that there is no history of road status updates.

So, I wrote a script that keeps tracks of all status updates and sends Emails when they happen, as well maps out the reporting points that Caltrans uses for it reports.

This is all on my Tahoe Road info page.

Season Opening at Kirkwood

2010-12-04T16:00:00Z

Ok, so we missed the really really nice thanksgiving weekend with more than 6ft of freshies and more that fell during that weekend. I suppose you can't be in the Grand Canyon and at kirkwood at the same time...

Anyway, we went the next saturday with Arturo, Johannes, Jim, and Bob. There was a bit of fresh snow, but the temps were a bit too high so by the time you hit the bottom, the powder was too wet and thick. Oh well...

Still, coverage was impressive for december, and it made for a good day of riding if you don't count my one fall in the drain where I slipped on ice and got side whiplash...

got a quick hot wax before heading out ($15 has gotten a bit steep though).

maybe we should ride that snowcat one day

Johannes in action

not a bad season start

chutes were already good

go Arturo!

you can do it!

Here are the snow days stats for Our Day At Kirkwood. See more images for Season Opening at Kirkwood

Epic Powder Day at Kirkwood

2010-04-05T15:00:00Z

I was bummed for having gone to Heavenly last wednesday for a so so snowfall when kirkwoo dwas doing a lot better as usual, so this time we went up for forecast storm on sunday afternoon (easter day).
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

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. See more images for Epic Powder Day at Kirkwood

Powder Day at Heavenly

2010-03-31T15:00:00Z

Snowforecast.com had predicted up to 26 inches at heavenly and up to 30 inches at kirkwood. Arturo and I decided we had to go check it out, but due to past bad experiences with Carson Spur closing during big storms and making it hard to reach Kirkwood, we went for South Lake Tahoe.
Turns out the storm was late and we could actualy have driven to Kirkwood that evening. Bummer...

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. See more images for Powder Day at Heavenly

Flight and Snowboarding weekend Mammoth

2010-03-20T15:00:00Z

We had a nice early spring weekend coming up and while I was pissed off for not being at kirkwood enjoying the fresh powder last weekend, I made plans for flying to Mammoth this weekend.
I owed Arturo a flight there since he had never gone, so that was a good time to make good on my promise, and thankfully he was able to come that weekend, so it was a plan.

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. See more images for Flight and Snowboarding weekend Mammoth

Company Ski Trip at Squaw

2010-03-04T16:00:00Z

Day 1 was disappointing. There were 12 to 18 inches of fresh snow and because of poor organization and a stupid bus driver that needlessly stopped us in Auburn for almost 30mn, by the time we got to Squaw there was actually a traffic jam and it took 45mn to drive from hwy 80 to the Squaw entrance (a mere few miles).

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 See more images for Company Ski Trip at Squaw

3 Day Weekend in Colorado at BreckenRidge, Vail, and Keystone

2010-02-23T16:00:00Z

To make up for the fact that he couldn't join me to Silverton, Arturo invited us for a 3 day weekend in Colorado. Due to our schedules, it was a bit last minute, and the bastards at United just jacked up their ticket price by 50% for the weekend 10 days away, so we took Frontier instead.
This turned out fine, except for the part where the Frontier plane was scheduled way too late on friday and we landed in Denver close to midnight local time, with still a 2H drive in the snow ahead of us (at least we got lucky, Colorado had been quite dry so far and had just gotten a well needed 12 inches).

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

The second day, we met up with Arturo's friends: Suwei and Karl and drove to Vail. Vail is indeed a huge resort, and there too we had to drive to an offsite parking lot and take a bus to get to a lift. The next 2 hours were spent crossing the mountain to the other side where we wanted to go, doing some nice runs in the process though.
Vail definitely had more snow, plus what was falling this day.

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. See more images for 3 Day Weekend in Colorado at BreckenRidge, Vail, and Keystone

Powder Weekend in Kirkwood

2010-02-07T16:00:00Z

My coworkers James and Jim and I drove to kirkwood on friday to their cabin, and woke up to a nice sight:

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. See more images for Powder Weekend in Kirkwood

First Snow Weekend of the Season at Kirkwood

2009-12-12T16:00:00Z

While we had early snow in October, our supposed El Nino ended up being disappointing so far: no real snow until now, but this week we got a good 4-5 feet at kirkwood, so it made up for it.

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... See more images for First Snow Weekend of the Season at Kirkwood

First Snow

2009-12-07T16:00:00Z

We've been waiting for real snow since an aborted early start in october and it's finally here. Not only a bunch of it, but snow levels were even low enough to snow in Fremont, nice.

It's about time for us to get shredding in Tahoe :)

10 Years Since My First Snow And Small Plane Flight

2009-03-27T15:00:00Z

Damn, time flies... It's been 10 years since my first flight to Mammoth where I first skied.
I ended up not picking up skiing, snowboarding is a lot better :) but I did pick up flying and flew my own butt back to Mammoth later.

Skiing Endless Powder in Silverton, Colorado

2009-03-26T15:00:00Z

Getting to Silverton

durango is a small airport mostly served by turboprops

Silverton is about 1H20 from the Durango airport, or longer if the weather is bad. Note that the town is at 9300ft of altitude, so while it will help you getting used to the altitude, it may also make it harder for you to sleep (diamox for altitude and sleeping pills help).
Johannes booked us up a bread and breakfast: Villa DallaValle. The lady who ran it was super nice, prices were very reasonable, and they even had free wifi. What else can a man ask for? :)

Silverton City

The deal about Silverton

So, when my colleague Johannes tried to invite me to join him, I was really on the fence. Quite frankly, I hate hiking, I even dislike unbinding when a ski resort has an uphill on path and I'm much happier when I can board down, already strapped in, from the lift directly to the slope and back to the chair before I unstrap :)
At Silverton, not only hiking is required, but it could be 5mn if you're lucky, or a more typical 15mn. If they haven't had snow in a while and you want to start from the 13,300ft peak (from the 12,300ft-ish top of the chair), you could be hiking for 1h+.
The good news is that you get to pick which group you're in, and you can pick a minimal hiking group, although unfortunately for us, that also meant intermediate group, and at least one skiier was a bit too intermediate to our state on the first couple of days (more on that later).

They do avalanche control and have mandatory basic avalanche training and force you to rent an avalanche beacon. Now, they still do avalanche prevention and they have professionals that know when the snow is likely safe, or not, but it's hard to get 100%. In the meantime, in 7 years of operation, they haven't had anyone fully covered in an avalanche yet, so that's not bad considering that even regular resorts have avalanche accidents sometimes.

So, Silverton (which actually the name of the nearby former silver mining town), the resort is technically in gladstone up a one way road. The place is not fancy, and it's not trying to be (eh, how could they be with only up to 80 guests per day?).
The resort is a tent in the snow with no running water but an outbound only phone, the rental "shop" is a likely broken down school bus wedged in the snow The only thing that looked new and in good shape was their powerful Eurocopter Heli (the same kind that flew to the top of everest), which is the one right place to spend money :)
Oh, in exchange for the lack of water, you get a free red bull :) and if you order the $10 sacked lunch, it also has a bottle of water. Now, the trick about sack lunches is that in the more advanced groups it may be tricky for you to have the time to pick it up, even to eat on the lift, or at least get it anywhere close to noon (unless you're willing to sit a run out). If you don't mind surviving on bars or somesuch, and you are more advanced, I recommend you carry your lunch with you and eat it on the 10mn lift as you get hungry, or while waiting for the pickup van after a run.
The last thing to mention is the restrooms, all I'll say is that if you don't have to use them, you'll be happier (they're an outhouse) :)

silverton: a tent, a burried schoolbus, and the heli

the sole ski lift

If you look at the tracks, you'll see they go back to a road. You can't ski all the way back to the lift (although the backside does have a cat track you can take back to the road), and once you are at the road, they pick you up with a fan, schoolbus, freshly jumped former UPS truck :) , or a pickup truck.

Silverton Day 1

This was the hardest day for me of course since I hadn't been able to exercise in 3 weeks, or see anything but sea level. Despite the diamox, I could tell the effects of altitude, but thankfully they did not cripple me.
Being in the intermediate group and only doing 5 runs was the right thing to do for that day. Our last ride up, the 15mn hike up did take its toll on me. I made it but had to stop a couple of times, I could clearly feel the effects of altitude.
The snow itself was fantastic, fresh tracks everywhere since it had just snowed 20" a few days prior and the resort was closed.

a primer on avalance training

one of the many hikes past the lift

Silverton Day 2

For day 2, I had acclimatized a bit more and we were hoping to go to a slightly more advanced group as long as it did not include major hiking. Unfortunately, we were told that advanced groups also meant advanced hiking. In the end, we got stuck in the same low intermediate group with the same slow skier. Doh! (yes, they should really have an advanced skier, more moderate hiking group)
That said, it's not like the day was bad :) The snow was still great and we actually had some sun and nicer weather (even got a tan through my sunscreen).

Heli Ride

After a couple of runs, our guide asked us if we would fancy joining a heli ride, to which we said "hell yes" :) We were actually reserved for 2 heli rides the next day, but they weren't booked, so it made sense to do one right away since the snow was pretty awesome.
It was my first heli ride from and to a mountain top, being a pilot myself I know that it's tough to fly low in mountains in any conditions other than no winds, and for a heli it's even more interesting since the heli has to land right on a mountain top where the wind and turbulence can be the strongest, and it may have compensate for the weight of and balance of the passengers and getting and out of the heli if the heli has to hover over terrain that's not quite landable (like let's say soft snow on a mountain top). Also, landing on a spot that is no bigger than a kind size bed is no piece of cake. Luckily, their pilot is as top notch as the high power Eurocopter they use (on top of him also being an airplane and heli instructor and very nice fellow, like everyone who works at Silverton).
The ride down from the first mountain top we flew to was reasonably easy terrain, but great powder, and definitely gave us a taste for the next day.
After 5 rides (including the heli ride) the day was over, mostly due to the fact that we got stuck in the intermediate group again.

a custom half pipe for some celebrity snowboarder

that looked like a guide, having a little fun :)

top of the world! (kinda) :)

Stuck in sugar snow

Now, the "fun" story is that on the way home, we wanted to go to the local ski shop. I had an incorrect understanding of where it was, so we took a snowy county road to get there. The fact that it only had a few snowmobile tracks maybe should have been a clue, but we had a 4WD, so we just pressed on.
That plan worked out until we got to an intersection where it became clear that where we were trying to get was not the right place. By then, Johannes had gotten off the snowmobile track to make a U-Turn. We lasted about 5 seconds before the car sunk in sugar snow and refused to move. Traction control on and off only changed the amount of wheel spin and the car manual revealed that it didn't have a locking differential (which means that it can refuse to turn at least 2 of the wheels if the other two are slipping).
Sugar snow is basically 100% traction-less and rocking was not even an option since the car would not move an inch. So, we broke out the avalanche shovels we had from our gear and started digging to put rocks under the tires. It had some success but we were not able to get the car entirely back to the harder snow even 1H+ later. By then, Johannes had a good idea and picked up some boards of wood from the nearby abandoned paper mill. Once we those dug in under the tires (all 4 just to make sure), getting out only took 3mn, but that was 1H30 after we got there...
By then a couple of locals had just driven the road up too because they saw someone had driven it, so it must have been drivable :) We assured them that it would be a good idea to get out in reverse, which is what we did too (they did tell us that we were not supposed to use the wood from a building that actually was a historical site, but Johannes' story was that he found the boards on the ground, and he's sticking to it :)
About 2H later we were back to the hotel, with at least a good picture from a higher vantage point, and the ski shop we were going to was actually much closer than we though, the road we had tried to take was all for naught.

oh boy, this is bad...

stones and rocks didn't help enough

that finally worked (we had one for each wheel)

Silverton Day 3

By day #3, I was as acclimatized to the altitude as I felt I was going to get, and we did not want to repeat the slow "intermediate" group a 3rd time, so we went to the advanced group. We ended up with 2 crazy Swiss snowboarders who just kicked ass. The good news is that we did not have to do much hiking because there was just so much powder to be had nearby, and because we were going to get two heli rides.
The powder runs we did almost off the lift or from a short hike were quite good, then the subsequent heli ride was a warm up per se (which was good for me because I had somehow put 3 core shots in my board and started an edge separation the previous day, it was out for repair, and I was having a hard time getting used to the new board and stance).
Then for the second heli ride, we did the narn: the highest peak you can fly to in the mountain (and definitely not hike to). The pilot landed on a spot that was no bigger than my bed, and just slowly sunk the heli in the fresh snow until he felt a stable enough mountain top to let us off (of course, they know it's supposed to work, they've done it before and scouted it when there is no snow, but still, damn impressive). The ride down was a bit of side slipping at the top but much fun below that. Well worth it :)
The best part was that despite the 2 heli rides, we still squeezed in 6 rides that day as opposed to 5 (the most you can reasonably manage if you hurry is around 7 it seems).

vantage point from first heli spot

the heli was nice enough to wait for us at the bottom for a 2nd ride

nice heli panel

top of the Gnar

the heli landed on that little spot

our guide scoping the way down

See a video of a nice heli landing on Gnar

Silverton Day 4

Day #3 was really the highlight of the trip for me, although the powder was really the best on days 1 and 2, as it was already warm enough by day 3 that it would melt and freeze overnight in some places.

Climbing up to the Billboard: buyer beware

Day 4 was mostly a chill out day, except that due to few customers they only had a single advanced group and a few people wanted to hike to the Billboard, which is the highest hikeable peak (about 13,000ft from the 12,200 chair top). I wasn't really stoked by a 1H+ hike, but went with the group since I knew that I was in good enough shape to hike 700ft up. The problem was that the path became more sketchy as we went up and went from a hike to a mountaineering climb which I was not ready for. By then there was really only one way: up and in some spots I was hoping not to slip while hanging on to rocks (with my snowboard attached sideways on the back of my pack, and throwing me a bit off balance or hitting the rock face on the left). Some portions were roped, making the climb less dangerous, but other portions weren't and you had to climb up diagonally to the mountain face, as the guide admitted later were 'no fuck up zones' as slipping and falling would have had very possible dire consequences.
We finally got to the top after a pretty steep climb that you can only do by stepping in not always very deep boot kicks and pulling yourself up on a rope, while wishing your snowboard boots had crampons and that you had proper climbing and safety gear. At least they had a rope, without which I would have fallen down a couple of times since I slipped and hung on to the rope.
For those who might think I'm a pussy, I hiked up Mt Whitney, the highest peak in the continental US (1500ft higher), but notice how I said hiked, not climbed. My only point is that I really wish they had warned us that this was not a hike up but a serious climb up with real dangers others than normal snowboarding dangers (never mind if it's in a portion of the unreadable 10,000+ word waiver they make you sign without you being able to humanely read it without missing at least the first run in the morning).
I mentioned that to the owner, and hopefully guides will at least give people a fair verbal warning to people about the climb before they go on it. My take is that your risks of injuring yourself or dying from that climb are higher than the avalanche danger, so it can't hurt to let people know verbally when they join a group and give them the option of switching (which was my other suggestion: they should have an advanced skier/boarder group with minimal hiking and one with 'bring it on' hiking, to each their own).
The rest of the 4 runs we did were fine, powder was better in the trees by then due to the sun and fast melting snow in some spots.

long ass hike to the billboard

the hike became a somewhat dicy climb after this point

at the top, finally

the ride down was pretty nice

Conclusion

Here are a few pictures that my buddy Johannes, took:

bridge was slippery and with very uneven snow

Plenty of powder (and stay between the lines)

chatting with the eurocopter pilot

We got super lucky with the weather. Silverton is all about powder riding, and we were lucky enough to get said powder. The heli rides aren't that cheap of course, but compared to other heli options you may be able to find, they are actually quite reasonably priced, especially for a heli that costs over $2000/h to run. Now, if you hate hiking or don't do well at high altitudes, you may want to think about it twice. I personally dislike hiking when I'm boarding, but I like powder more than I disliked the hiking, so I was willing to take the tradeoff. To each their own :)
The operation is obviously small since they can only make up to $6400 per day with an 80 guest limit, and days where they have fewer, but they definitely make the best of it, and are super friendly and helpful.
If I can have good odds of getting fresh powder again, I'd be game for doing this again. See more images for Skiing Endless Powder in Silverton, Colorado

Half of Heavenly is great, but the half with flats and uphills sucks :)

2009-03-05T16:00:00Z

After watching the weather, it was clear that today was the day to be in Tahoe: turned out to be another bluebird (although that part was just last minute luck), and while the brave people went the day before to wait for roads and lifts to open and get even fresher powder as it felt, today everything was open and weather was great, with gobs of powder to spare.

I found a couple of other coworkers to agree with me on that point :) and we went to Heavenly. Unfortunately, IMO, we didn't do the lifts quite right: I think we should have started with Sky Express and camped at Mott (lifties didn't know when it was going to open, and I missed that by 30-45mn, which was way too much for nice fresh runs) instead of starting at Stagecoach. Yet, we all got great runs and a great day nonetheless (while I missed most of Mott, the tree runs off Sky and California trail were pretty grand).
Then, I tried my luck and went to Killebrew when it opened. It was indeed a great run down, but the 30-45mn getting back in snow that I could not walk on, and could only hop on my snowboard on, on a long flat or sometimes uphill trail, just didn't make it worth the price of admission IMO.

And now that I'm in ranting mode, while the views are really nice, and some of the slopes and tree runs are great when they do get enough snow (which this time they had), Heavenly has so many flat spots, it's not even funny.
I won't mention Killebrew canyon because I'm willing to consider it as a separate portion of the mountain, but the numerous flat or uphill spots, the number of times you have to unbind off a lift just to get to a trail (like Dipper Express to Mott), or runs that just end up nowhere close to a lift are hard to bear for a snowboarder who hates to walk or push. However, the possibly worst part was getting back to Stagecoach at the end of the day: it required taking Crossover (flat/uphill) which was badly labelled and then dumped me into Olympic, with more bad markings to get to Stagecoach. I eventually got there thanks to taking out my map 3 times in freezing cold (my fingers were dying) and my GPS with lift names vs where I actually was (sure, it's better if you know the mountain inside and out, but I get to say it sucks :) )

nice run, but not steep enough for that amount of powder

The tree runs from California Trail or off sky were great

and heavenly wins again for its view

sign that says 'if you have not used a chair lift before', at the bottom of Mott Canyon, hahaha

Mott Canyon

more great tree runs

The lovely sometimes uphill path off Killebrew

and here's the track & stats of the day at Heavenly
See more images for Half of Heavenly is great, but the half with flats and uphills sucks :)

Mixed Snow weekend at Heavenly and Kirkwood

2009-02-28T16:00:00Z

On saturday morning, on the way up, we were pondering whether we should go for Kirkwood first or Heavenly first. Because by then the weather was forecast to have more snow on sunday while being nicer on saturday, I offered to go to Heavenly saturday to enjoy the nicer views, and hope for the K-factor to do its job on sunday.

Saturday ended up being downgraded from a foot of snow to none at all, so it was a good idea to be at Heavenly as we got to enjoy the lake views and rode in pretty good weather. I still hate heavenly for all its flat (or uphill) spots, but a couple of rides in Mott Canyon were decent, and the later part of the day, rides from sky express dropping in random places from the traverse to Nevada, were actually pretty good.

Looks like I had a bit too much fun with my board last time

Sunday morning was disappointing because we had gotten 0 snow still, but we headed to kirkwood, as planned. The first rides were a bit crunchy and whatever powder was left has a crusty top, making turns fairly hard. To make things worse, the back side was closed, and even corniche was closed (they claimed wind hold, but wind was not that bad at the top).
So, we were left with riding the wall, which they could not fill to capacity due to it being half broken, which soon gave for long lines.
Luckily, it started snowing soon after the lifts opened, and by noon, it was snowing pretty hard. By then Corniche has finally opened (about freaking time), and the afternoon made for much better riding in pretty wet, but still fresh snow. For the last hour, we had enough new snow that it felt like a powder day :) That's a good thing since Jennifer was here for her first time this year, and the weekend wsa worthy enough :)
I also found out after the day was over, was that Heavenly apparently had many of its lifts closed for winds while they barely got any snow while Kirkwood got enough powder by the end of the day that it was fairly nice to ride.

Beautiful weather at kirkwood :)

and here's the track & stats of the day at heavenly
and here's the track & stats of the day at kirkwood. See more images for Mixed Snow weekend at Heavenly and Kirkwood

Ridiculous Snow Day at Kirkwood

2009-02-18T16:00:00Z

After spending the day looking through the window at the crapload of rain we got at home. I was watching the status on nexrad and could tell that the precipitation was barely crossing the Sierras. As a result, kirkwood on the west side of the mountains got dumped on while other resorts in Tahoe got some snow, but not huge amounts, and overall bad weather (high winds, lift closures, etc...).
Yet, even with the lift closures and bad weather, I was kind of wishing that I had been to kirkwood when I was at work on tuesday, and that's when I looked at the weather report and realized that not only kirkwood had gotten another 2ft since everyone left monday evening (president's day 3 day weekend), but it was due to have another foot tuesday and nice sunny weather wednesday.
3ft of fresh powder in sunny non windy weather was not something one could pass up, so I asked around and found a coworker who agreed with me :) as well as my snowboarding buddy Bob. As a result, I got up at 03:50 and by 04:30 the three of us were on our way to kirkwood to get there in time for first lift. We may have overdone it a bit, but we were there by 08:10, with plenty of time to spare.

What can I saw about the day? It was more then epic: I had never experienced over 3ft of fresh powder (in spots that had been closed and just got opened back today), and while I thought I was a decent powder snowboarder, today I realized that 3 ft of fresh powder is actually too much for me: despite having my binding stance as far back as they'd go, and knowing the basics of powder: keep your speed and lean back, it was too easy to just sink in deep powder and eventually have my weight shift forward, my nose dive in, and then either lose balance or just get stuck with my feet and board very well stuck under 3 ft of snow :)
Getting out of that situation is no fun, your hands are useless since you can't push against powder, so I basically had to throw my body (and basically face) forward, and roll so that I could eventually lift my board out of the very heavy powder that was keeping it down. I had to do this a few times, it was very straineous, and a good lesson that there can be too much of a good thing :)

But when I stuck to more reasonable 1ft powder stashes, it was a lot easier :)
I also got lucky today by managing close enough to first lift on Corniche, Wall, Eagle Bowl, and then Sunrise, giving nice powder runs each time :)

You might think this looks cool until you realize I had my board on and had to get out of this :)

Looking back at the day, it was both serious fun and very challenging, even if I didn't have the equipment or skill to make the best of them, the conditions were truly incredible: the best I have seen in 10 years of snowboarding.
It is however a bummer that because we had such a great day today, the snow will be mostly crap tomorrow because it was warm enough that it melted, and by the end of the day as the sun set, I could already tell that it was icing and crusting up on top. That's a shame for those who'll be there tomorrow :(

and here's the track & stats of the day. See more images for Ridiculous Snow Day at Kirkwood

Stupid Cop

2009-02-08T16:00:00Z

When driving saturday, they had chain control on 88 around 8 (past Cook's station) when quite frankly the road conditions were fairly good by then (ice apparently had mostly melted by that time).

The chain control guy was stopping every car to say be careful because of ice and earlier cars that lost it (probably over an hour ago) and the chain control had a 25mph sign.

15mn down the road, after passing over a crest, we get flagged by some pissed off CHP who was yelling at us for doing an estimated 40 (he had no radar, he just eyed it) when quite frankly we weren't pushing it at all and the road was actually fairly good.
While we got ticketed, he started stopping and yelling at other cars all doing over 25 too, and stopped the next car he could get after "taking care of us".

When we drove 25 for the rest of the road to kirkwood, it just enticed pissed off traffic behind us to do dodgy passes, creating more harm and danger than allowing people to drive a more reasonable speed.

In the meantime, the ticket is of course there, and I'm guessing they'll be there next weekend too, so if the conditions are similar, you get the choice between not risking a ticket too much and risking to create accidents while blocking traffic, or going a more reasonable speed and risking a ticket.

Good luck :-//

Tahoe Weekend with Bill, Johannes & Arturo

2009-02-07T16:00:00Z

As sad as it is to say, this was probably the 3rd fresh snow weekend of the season. The snowpack was worringly low (90" at the top for kirkwood, a mere 48" at the top for Heavenly (!), for that matter Heavenly was still making snow at higher elevations and had some top trails closed due to coverage issues). For comparison, a top year for kirkwood has brought 804", or about 7 times more when we're already half way through the season

Anyway, snow fell, so we had to be there. It's true that there was a lot of uncovered or badly covered terrain, one could not even drop safely from the wall, due to lack of coverage still, but there were enough covered spots with enough snow to still have a good time. We also got to try the "new" tow rope at the top of the wave, and got way way out of bounds as a result :) This was the first time I actually used my GPS at kirkwood to find out if we were hiking back towards the lift, or not.

Arturo, stuck over rocks

kite surfing on an ice lake

Here's a track of my day at kirkwood.

That night, we stayed at the very nice Alpenrose Inn, walking distance from the Heavenly Gondola.
Day 2, we went to Heavenly. It only got a few inches of fresh snow, but by skiing Mott Canyon and trees (and Heavenly does have a lot of tree terrain), it was actually quite good despite the fairly windy and cold weather.

this was as nice as the weather ever got

I can't believe that heavenly was still making snow

snow coverage was borderline coverage for february

pretty sights though

and here's a track of my day at heavenly.

Thanks much to Arturo for getting our butts there, and back. See more images for Tahoe Weekend with Bill, Johannes & Arturo

Late Start of Season at Kirkwood with Fresh Powder

2008-12-20T16:00:00Z

The start of this season was pretty horrible snow-wise, it's only this week that we finally got enough natural snow for resorts to be skiable. Of course, kirkwood beat everyone else by totally 4ft in just a few days. My initial plan was to go wednesday to get lost in the heaps of very fresh and dry powder, but I got sick for the 3rd time in a row the day before :(
Thankfully, this did not turn out too badly as my friend and coworker Johannes had planned to go the weekend and was able to take us. On one side, I did miss the heaps of dry powder, but on the other side the mountain was not that well covered off the main trails, and it was easy to ride often hidden rocks more or less everywhere, especially if you were into tree skiing, so I can only imagine how wednesday must have been a bit dicy and how it would have been easy to hit the bottom.

So, this weekend qualified as excellent early season conditions: nice powder (although not as dry and fluffy anymore) and enough of a base that we only somewhat damaged our boards as opposed to severely damage them :) (I took my rock board, so no biggie). I convinced my friend Johannes to stay at kirkwood (I found a one bedroom at kirkwood on VRBO for $320/night, or $107/head, which isn't cheap but was damn convenient :) (the owner gets credit for driving the keys over to us that same evening as we had only finalized our plans friday evening)
Saturday was actually a nice bluebird day while sunday was colder and snowy but allowed for more powder. Deep palisades was actually quite good already, although during the traverses there were some unavoidable quite rocky sections that I had to just jump or fall from as they were unridable.

The only downer was that I was riding my old rock board with step in boots and had left my brand new vans boots in the car, and they somehow got lost/stolen some time during the weekend. Grumble... On the plus side, Jennifer had a good time and made good use of the time off work and worries at home :)

the rocks were everywhere, often hidden right under the snow

Johannes was a fairly decent boarder and I didn't have to wait for him much :)

the chute skier's left from Corniche, still hard to ride down without scraping on rocks

the condo we got was quite good

we had snow/rain the entire way back

See more images for Late Start of Season at Kirkwood with Fresh Powder

A weekend in Mammoth for spring skiing.

2008-04-18T00:31:00Z

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 .

3 days at kirkwood, more than 3 feet of fresh powder

2008-02-26T15:43:00Z

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

Quick day at kirkwood

2008-01-14T12:36:00Z

After blizzard conditions, and more than 2 metres (!) of snow that fell in 2-3 days, everyone and their brother tried to go to Tahoe the following weekend.
Unfortunately, outside of crazy crowding, the snow had also melted and frozen, so there was a good base, but the snow conditions are not great.
That said, Jennifer hadn't seen any snow this season yet, so we decided to do a day trip sunday. Poor Jennifer didn't manage to sleep much before we left due to having so many things to do for her upcoming work trip in the UK, so when we left around 05:20, I did the drive and we got there in 2h50 or so.
As expected, the snow was frozen in some places, but when we stuck to the sunny spots, it was good enough. Jennifer and I were both trying our new flow bindings, which worked fine for me because I also had new boots, but Jennifer found out that her boots were actually not a good fit (either too tight in some places, or too loose, and with her ankle moving). Her old strap in bindings must have compensated for the boot issues.
She kind of had a hard time due to the boots, but was still happy to get some snow. We'll get her new boots when she comes back.

It was kind of sad that all the snow that looked nice and pristine was also crusted and very hard to ride/make turns in. Oh well...
The rest of the picts are here

Mountain Dynamics GPS Maps / Sierra@Tahoe GPS track

2007-12-22T01:24:00Z

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:

Opening the Snow Season: Day Trip @ Sierra@Tahoe (updated)

2007-12-21T14:04:00Z

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:

Ending the Season at Kirkwood

2007-04-23T13:20:00Z

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

Quick day in Kirkwood

2007-03-04T15:21:00Z

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

3 days in Whistler Blackcomb

2007-02-27T14:03:00Z

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 nauseous 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). This was also while wearing plastic shoes I had just bought in the airport because I forgot/lost my shoes that morning, and all I had left to wear were my snowboarding boots :)
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

Best of Best of Snow Pictures

2007-02-13T01:14:00Z

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 :)

A Couple of Hours of Powder at Dodge Ridge

2007-02-12T12:35:00Z

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

Yearly Company Ski Trip

2007-02-06T12:12:00Z

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

Quick early season day at Kirkwood

2006-12-18T13:31:00Z

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

Back to my roots: reunited with Mammoth

2006-05-01T14:14:00Z

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

Snowboarding at Whistler

2006-04-11T14:41:00Z

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)

Skiing at Heavenly

2006-04-03T14:25:00Z

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 Google 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!" :)

Dodge Ridge

2006-03-20T14:07:00Z

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. 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 :)

Weekend at Kirkwood

2006-03-06T15:07:00Z

While the weather was turning for the worse (i.e. good for snowboarding), I was wondering if I'd be able to go kirkwood due to having gotten sick.
In the end, I just decided to chance it, got up at the crack of dawn, and headed up with Jen thanks to my coworker Matt and his wife who were driving up there, and picked us up.
Unfortunately, despite the early departure, we got there quite late (on the slopes by 11:00), most of all the fresh powder was just gone. Yet, the conditions were still quite good

Day 2 was more dicy: very windy, but otherwise good snow conditions too.
We also got there quite late in the morning due to a small but miscommunication between me, half sleeping in the car, and the driver, whom I thought knew how to get to kirkwood (i.e. the same way we took the previous night, except the other way around), and he ended up going back on hwy 50, driving towards home for a good 45mn before I was awake enough to notice. Doh!
We eventually turned around and went back to kirkwood. That'll teach me not to pay attention, and assume anything.

All in all, a good weekend, I was healed by saturday morning, and got home without having hurt myself or even being sore :)
As usual, if you want to, you can look at the rest of the pictures from Kirkwood

yes, in some places you had powder past your knees

It can't be that hard now, can it? Other people manage to stop on the way down :)

Deep palisades, lots of work to get there, but it was nice

Nice to know what I had done that day (see GPS post)

Oh, the nice rotor cloud, just like it said in my mountain flying book

The second day had decent snow but bad weather

Weekend at kirkwood

2006-02-22T14:01:00Z

Finally! Fresh snow in Kirkwood, my first time this year... Technically Saturday was the best day with up to 2 feet of snow in some portions of kirkwood, however it was not a good time and easy to go there at the time.
That said, when Jen and I made it there on Sunday morning, it was still quite good conditions.
However, since I totally failed in planning, I managed to get there without any of my two digital cameras... I ended up settling for a throwaway camera, which after I got the pictures developed on CD today, ended up yielding pictures that were no better than what you'd get from a good camera phone nowadays. Lame...

Anyway, back to Kirkwood, the conditions were quite good, we had a great time, and the blue student did quite good on black terrain. I was suitably impressed actually :)

The drive home was so uneventful and quick (no traffic jams) that it almost sounded weird, but we didn't complain :)

Nice powder

You don't fall from as high if you get down the slope that way :)

Sitting at the corniche, right before a death defying jump :)

The rest of the pictures are here

Flying weekend / Mammoth Flight

2006-02-13T13:45:00Z

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

Company Ski Trip / Weekend

2006-02-06T14:55:00Z

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 :)

No, I wasn't the biggest geek at the google party :)

trying to build an oscillator on a circuit board

The Thursday night party itself was all right. I was tired, the food was so-so by google standards, but it was still fun, especially with my shiny shirt :). I spent the rest of the evening talking on the phone in the snow outside until I started getting really cold :) and went to bed soon after that

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 and the Google Party

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 :)
(the rollerblading path goes by a duck pond, and right by final at Palo Alto Airport, so it was also nice to watch the planes land).

Kirkwood, I missed you

2005-12-22T14:46:00Z

Well, last weekend, I was a bit busy :) and this week wasn't looking much better, but when I saw that bad weather, I was just hitching too much so I decided to drive my own sorry butt there (I usually never drive, I really hate that drive :) ). While I didn't really have the time to go, Wednesday looked like the best bet, so I got up at 05:15 (ouch), and headed out around 06:10 after refueling my car.
I did great time there (2H40) considering the school buses on the road, trucks, and other people who didn't feel like driving twice the speed limit :)
Note too self: there are too many cops on this road, even in the morning.
It did get interesting when I got closer to Kirkwood, the temperature dropped to 2 degrees C, and I had to worry about black ice. First, my car started going sideways when I was passing a truck in a straight line and a passing zone (apparently the back left wheel hit some ice). It took for some quick countersteering and dynamic stability control (i.e. fancy traction control) to kick in for the car to go straight again.
Later, I was able to use my sideways driving skills (i.e. mild powerslides) in the turns before I got to kirkwood: the road was mildly icy, and my "do not use in snow" race tires aren't really designed for this. It was a good exercise :)

I got to Kirkwood at 08:50, 10mn before opening time, so by the time I was ready, it was not too long after the first lifts were sent up. Yay!
The ski conditions were ok. The snow wasn't great (definitely not powder), but it wasn't icy either.
I stopped around lunchtime, and met my good friend but now distant coworker, N, who happened to be at kirkwood for a few days, so I took a well needed break to chat with her.
By the time I got back outside (13:00-ish), everyone was there before the lifts had just been shut down due to lightening that had just hit the mountain.
Unfortunately, they only got turned back on by 14:45, leaving for another 1H15 of snowboarding, but I made the best of it, especially as most people had bailed by then. I also used the time waiting, to work on my laptop in my car.

I'm told the snowboard helmet hair works for me :)

The drive back wasn't as fun. Not only was it pouring rain, I narrowly avoided two other cops, and then my car started saying that I had a tire failing (although it wasn't nice enough to tell me which one). Since I had hit a pothole at kirkwood, I was a bit worried. I pulled over under the rain to visually check the tires, but they looked ok.
When I started driving again, I was wondering what the odds were that my tire sensor was wrong. I knew that in my car it used the ABS sensors to measure how many rotations each tire was doing, and would detect a slow deflation since the decrease in diameter would cause that tire to turn quicker.
When I finally hit a covered gas station, I checked the pressure in each tire, but they were all good, so I just continued the drive home, and got there almost 3H40 later. This reminded me how much I don't like driving to Tahoe: 6H20 on the road for 4H of snowboarding... (and I can't even complain, a 6H20 round trip to Tahoe is not actually that bad)
But in the end, it was still worth it, at least I got to see some snow before february :)

Oh, on the way back, I found a very decorated house close to Hwy 88 and Hwy 99. This reminded me of John Steward saying "What part of god bless the USA did you not understand!!!" after the terrorist attacks...
The rest of the pictures are here

My butt should so be in Tahoe :(

2005-03-23T14:17:00Z

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...

All in a day's work

2005-02-22T14:34:00Z

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

Epic day

2005-02-21T11:41:00Z

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 :)

Kirkwood: 2 days, 2 to go

2005-02-20T11:24:00Z

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.

Comments:
Wasn't the best night ever last night, but who cares, 2 feet of fresh powder fell. Woot! :)
posted by MM : 20 February, 2005 07:15

Planning, what's the point? :)

2005-02-19T10:50:00Z

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 :)

Kirkwood, I missed you

2005-02-01T01:08:00Z

Current Music: AVB - ASOT 159
Current Mood: Good

I really wasn't supposed to go to Kirkwood this weekend, mostly because it wasn't supposed to get much snow, and because I was supposed to take another weekend off to "rest" my sprained rib.
Then, I glanced at the weather reports, ended up seeing two feet of fresh snow, and I just couldn't pass that up. Getting there was more of a problem since it was last minute, and a lot of my tahoe buddies were sick. Eventually, I ended up going with Bob, which unfortunately did mean getting up at 04:50, and only getting there at 11:00 because he had to stop on the way, but eh, it beat not going there at all, or by myself.
Unfortunately, I started feeling like crap in the car, not just tired, but more some kind of sickness. Trying to sleep didn't really help a whole lot, but I think the airborne (vitamins + other stuff) I took, plus another vitamin mix later actually helped, and I miraculously started getting better throughout the day, even if my first runs down were a bit iffy as I could not trust my body and muscles that much.
Most of the powder was kind of gone, both because we got there late, and because well, the real day to be there was friday (and I knew that, I really should have skipped work :) , but still, the conditions were quite good, and I still found a some powder in my secret, maybe slightly out of bounds, spots :)
As for my right rib, well, it probably didn't get better, but it didn't get worse either, thanks to the killer anti-inflamatories (yeah!)

I guess next time is probably not going to be before two weeks from now since I really have to write my conference proceedings for linux.conf.au (due this week I think).

Anyway, pictures are here

Company Ski Trip

2005-01-23T08:24:00Z

Current Music: Battlestar Galactica - 1x06 Litmus (i.e. SciFi on TV)
Current Mood: Ok, I guess

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

Weekend at Kirkwood.... I mean Heavenly

2005-01-18T05:58:00Z

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

Using up the snow while it's there

2004-11-16T01:58:00Z

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

New Snow Season

2004-11-08T08:28:00Z

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

Kirkwood

2004-04-19T23:59:00Z

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

To Tahoe...

2004-04-17T11:23:00Z

Current Music: Scooter - 24 Carat Gold - She's The Sun
Current Mood: Mmhhh....

Getting up at 05:00, departure around 05:30, hopefully hitting Kirkwood by 9-ish, except that if we do get any snow, we'll be driving smack in the middle of it. Oh well, it's for a good cause :)

Sure, you could ask why I'm not leaving tonight and having a good night of sleep in South Lake Tahoe...

To Tahoe or not to Tahoe?

2004-04-16T00:30:00Z

Weather.com seems to have settled as far as kirkwood weather is concerned for this weekend.
It won't be an epic weekend. For that matter, according to the national weather service forecast office , it may just even be traces of snow, no mention of how many inches or feet as they've done in the past, but it's still tempting...

Mmmh, I guess I need to find someone to go with, the conditions don't warrant me driving there by myself

Weekend in Tahoe

2004-03-29T15:17:00Z

Current Music: Armin Van Buuren - A State of Trance 138 - 2004-03-04
Current Mood: Fairly Good

So, since it snowed a foot or so on thursday, there was just no excuse not to go to Tahoe. The good thing is that it coincided with the trip a coworker had organized. So, the 7 of us ended up in a cabin in South Lake, and went to Kirkwood on Saturday.
The part that you had to be there for, is when the 3 early risers in the cabin all managed to fit in a (quite nice) mini cooper S, along with 2 snowboards (mine is 163cm), a pair of skis, and lots of other gear. That was quite fun ;)

The snow was reasonable considering, but for a change, I didn't disappear the whole day in a quest to get every inch of fresh powder, and ended up snowboarding with everyone in the group (in turns, since they had different levels and went to different places on the mountain).
The highlight was definitely when I managed to fall off the lift, something I hadn't done once the whole season, in an attempt not to be in front of my friends (both on my left and right). Unfortunately, the exit being a bit icy, this interesting maneuver ended up with me rolling over my head, and Bryan more or less riding against/over my head (thank god for the helmet).
No real harm done, except for screwing up my neck, yet again :(

A big after our late lunch, I went over to Palisades to meet the two bunnies in the group and ride with them until the end of the day. They did quite well considering the snow condition (it was becoming icy because the sun was too low), and it was too hard for me to manage any good faky riding (almost ate it 3 times, but somehow managed to save it each time)

Fun was had the evening after that, first by kicking butt at foosball (scored 10 goals, including 2 against myself which caused me to barely lose in the end :). We then almost won at pictionary, if it weren't for the winning team that was cheating, the judges not accepting answers in French (how dare they?), and my teammate being creative at choosing other words on the card ;)
The funny part is that I was so far gone sleep-wise that I was actually one of the few who was ok around 03:00, as my body had just given up on seeing any sleep anytime soon, but the other folks bailed, so I never got to see the end of strange brew, which is quite unfortunate as it seemed to be a fine piece of cinematography :) (no matter, I just started downloading it)

My only regret (kinda) was not being able to ride on sunday, but than again, I think I never hurt so much after so little snowboarding (not counting a bad calf cramp that woke me up during the night. WTF, I've never ever had a cramp from snowboarding before, and I usually ride a lot harder than I did saturday). I can't even recall really falling and hurting myself outside of that one lift incident.

Some of the pictures can be found here

Anyway, we ended up getting home, and beating the other tahoe bus, because Brian thought he should listen to bad advise about a "shortcut" :)
I got home around 18:00 and started working on hooking up the new AV system I had just received friday.
4 hours later, risking my life in precarious balance situations on a chair behind my TV, some of it is hooked up, but there is still work to be done. At least I can hear my music through the 6 speaker surround system again. Yeah!

Tahoe, again, and again :)

2004-03-08T14:22:00Z

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)

Kirkwood, again :)

2004-03-02T00:42:00Z

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

Weekend at Kirkwood vs WRC

2004-02-23T15:40:00Z

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 :)
Link Of The Day: Ever heard of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch ?

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. Check this highlight video out to see what I mean (warning 150MB, but it's worth it). The hardest part is in Corsica, France , hopefully there won't be any major accidents there this year.

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:

a helmet. Don't even argue, your skull and face are valuable
solid googles (saves your face and eyes from scaring if you get a branch in the face)
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 :)

Marc's Public Blog - Snow

Plea To Caltrans: Improve Your Communication

Why the goals below are worth following

Target Goals

Caltrans: you should announce tentative road changes, and report road changes as quickly as practical, and reliably

Caltrans blog for each road

More user friendly as well as computer parsable status reports

Conclusion

Another Big Storm Headed for Tahoe

Big Sky and Moonlight Basin, Montana

Kirkwood Snow Stats for 2011/03/27:

Work Tahoe Ski Trip

Riding a Storm at Kirkwood

Catching the early part of a big storm in Tahoe

Seeking kirkwood powder during 3 day weekend

Real time Caltrans road updates for Tahoe and graphical reporting points for hwy 88, 89, 50 and i80

Season Opening at Kirkwood

Epic Powder Day at Kirkwood

Powder Day at Heavenly

Flight and Snowboarding weekend Mammoth

Company Ski Trip at Squaw

3 Day Weekend in Colorado at BreckenRidge, Vail, and Keystone

BreckenRidge

Vail

Keystone

Powder Weekend in Kirkwood

First Snow Weekend of the Season at Kirkwood

First Snow

10 Years Since My First Snow And Small Plane Flight

Skiing Endless Powder in Silverton, Colorado

Getting to Silverton

The deal about Silverton

Silverton Day 1

Silverton Day 2

Heli Ride

Stuck in sugar snow

Silverton Day 3

Silverton Day 4

Climbing up to the Billboard: buyer beware

Conclusion

Half of Heavenly is great, but the half with flats and uphills sucks :)

Mixed Snow weekend at Heavenly and Kirkwood

Ridiculous Snow Day at Kirkwood

Stupid Cop

Tahoe Weekend with Bill, Johannes & Arturo

Late Start of Season at Kirkwood with Fresh Powder

A weekend in Mammoth for spring skiing.

3 days at kirkwood, more than 3 feet of fresh powder

Quick day at kirkwood

Mountain Dynamics GPS Maps / Sierra@Tahoe GPS track

Opening the Snow Season: Day Trip @ Sierra@Tahoe (updated)

Ending the Season at Kirkwood

Quick day in Kirkwood

3 days in Whistler Blackcomb

Best of Best of Snow Pictures

A Couple of Hours of Powder at Dodge Ridge

Yearly Company Ski Trip

Quick early season day at Kirkwood

Back to my roots: reunited with Mammoth

Snowboarding at Whistler

Skiing at Heavenly

Dodge Ridge

Weekend at Kirkwood

Weekend at kirkwood

Flying weekend / Mammoth Flight

Company Ski Trip / Weekend

Kirkwood, I missed you

My butt should so be in Tahoe :(

All in a day's work

Epic day

Kirkwood: 2 days, 2 to go

Comments: Wasn't the best night ever last night, but who cares, 2 feet of fresh powder fell. Woot! :) posted by MM : 20 February, 2005 07:15

Planning, what's the point? :)

Kirkwood, I missed you

Company Ski Trip

Weekend at Kirkwood.... I mean Heavenly

Using up the snow while it's there

New Snow Season

Kirkwood

To Tahoe...

Comments:
Wasn't the best night ever last night, but who cares, 2 feet of fresh powder fell. Woot! :)
posted by MM : 20 February, 2005 07:15