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2009-02-07 01:01
in Nsnow, Snow
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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. |
