Marc's Public Blog

After that, went to check out the Almaden Quicksilver Museum, a very interesting museum about mercury that was mined there, and used for a fair amount of things, including getting gold from gold ore:

Next was a good hike in the Almaden Quicksilver County Park:

mine entrance, but you can't go inside

got that picture

some ranger made a wrong turn :)

so cute

I didn't even know Jyorei existed, very cool

kois are serious business in japan :)

Ikebana, flower arrangement, is always enjoyable:

The performances have always been good and enjoyable:

This was lots of fun, looking forward to the next time.

Snow coverage was excellent for that time of the year, although the snow was obviously variable and you had to follow the sun or the snow was icy or too wet. Still, for that time of the year, it was better than average for sure.

great to meet ovidiu, it had been a while

and then there is this troublemaker

chamoix was still in very good shape, snow all the way down

palisades was still in great shape

People also had nice costumes:

Group pictures:

some music before the drive home :)

Dezza opened the night:

After a while, we had power outages due to a utility pole having short circuits (some saw blue lightening). Thankfully PG&E fixed it pretty quickly considering:

Thankfully things were fixed in time by 23:00 for Steve to start his set:

found another Tshirt copycat :)

Dave Dresden and his partner came to join us for the epic night

Steve brough his own turntable needles for perfect rendition

It was a great night, super happy we got to go. Video summary:

Despite leaving at 13:00, the drive got delayed by 30mn due to traffic (damn, things clog up early now). That caused my tesla to save battery use (slower speed) and I had an estimate of 21% left of arrival before the last climb. This got down to 9% when I arrived, as my drive up took more than planned, as usual (despite virtually no snow on the road). Snow line was a bit over 6000ft, carson spur was not too covered anymore, so no worries about it closing:

coverage left was decent

The snow was a bit wet (high snoe line) and didn't stay much on the road/base, but the next morning, we had some. Unfortunately lifts opened 1h late due to lack of staff to do snow safety. Once opened, the snow was pretty good:

unfortunately lifts opened 1h late, lik

finally got to go up

Chamoix was in really good shape

The wall still had a good amount of snow left

Even Palisades was still open

Day #2 had more snow, although it came late a night and continued throughout the day, it was pretty wet. Good amounts of snow, but the conditions were tough and most people got pretty wet. Snow was pretty wet and heavy and took a lot of effort to ride. Still, not complaining, it was fun :)

as a result, few people running the lifts, even on a sunday.

The really cool part of that museum is of course the space shuttle that was moved there:

including a booster

After flying the space shuttle to LAX (through a nice flight across the california coast, I remember seeing it when it flew by the bay area), they show the challenging trip to the science center:

The rest of the museum was still fun to see, including a next expo on Ankor:

And nice gardens on the way out: