Marc's Public Blog - Snow

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