We got to Kirkwood 45mn later than needed due to the long detour, but still made it by 09:15 or so. Because cornice did not open until 10:00 or so, and the Wall not until noon-ish, we did not miss out too much despite arriving later than planned. The snow was packed powder due to the water content, but it was still powder. Better than sierra cement or ice :) Crowds were not terrible, thanks to it being a friday.

the wall was bombed a lot

we had a mix of sun, high wind and snow flurries

glad to see another smart snowboarder, with poles :)

Thanks Johannes for getting us there and back!

Day #1 was nice and had a bit of sun to help see the nice powder. Almost everything opened that day, so lots of terrain with not too many people:

Day #2 didn't have sun for long, lots of good snows and self refilling tracks, but poor viz, high winds, and very cold:

everyone made a run to the Wall when cornice didn't open at 09:00 when it was supposed to

Day #3 was more difficult. Very cold too, snow storm most of the day, and kirkwood couldn't get stuff opened. They only opened 6 after a never ending 2H wait. The first tracks were nice, but open terrain was very limited.

2h wait to finally be allowed up a limited section of chair 6, that was disappointing

very hard snow, no more pictures

After only 2H of skiing, and talking to Jennifer about the show we had that evening, I decided to try and get home after one of the two roads out finally re-opened. By leaving at 13:30, that would have been plenty of time, but sadly while driving down carson pass, I made a judgement mistake which combined with heavy regenerative braking kicking in in the middle of a slippery downhill turn, caused me to understeer and drive into a snow bank. It took over 1h30 to get out

a nice Audi with 3 awesome guys who helped me shovel out, was unable to pull me out

Caltrans truck then slid into the audi and hit its front

snow plow slid off the road and got stuck, had to be towed out by caltrans scraper

finally the just arrived caltrans scraper had enough weight and torque to pull me out

The rest of the drive home was not fun, took me around 7.5h, includuing the 1.5h stuck in the snow bank. But that was nothing compared to the people driving up hwy 50 on a friday afternoon/night and who took hours and hours to get through the pass...

Johannes was a trooper and offered to drive me to Tahoe, which was super great given that I had a concert on friday night and got to bed around 01:00. Sadly, my plan failed miserably and I slept past both my alarms for 05:00. Johannes was super nice and just waited for me to wake up (it's more complicated than this, but skipping details), and we ended up being on the road around 07:15. By then Carson Spur was still closed sadly (it only opened at 13:00, very late), so we ended up driving past Sierra @ Tahoe on hwy50 around 11:30 and figured it was already late enough that we might as well just go there. Sadly we didn't know the resort well and went to the famed West Bowl was actually kind of stupid because while it had plenty of snow, it was lacking slope. We later (too late) went to the main lift on the front side, and that gave much better terrain and pitch:

good enough for the day given that it was already 11:30

the tree runs I did were great, but honestly very technical, even for me

convertible RWD porsche without chains just after a snow storm, ballsy but well done

Since we were sleeping in South Lake, heavenly for day #2 was the easiest, but also I figured they'd have more untracked terrain than kirkwood, so we gave that a shot. Mott opened at 10:00 and I made the mistake of not being at the rope waiting for it to open, so I missed the first group down and it was half tracked for my first run. First line was about 30mn, second line was 40mn+. Yikes!

nice view as always

worst Mott line ever

people lined up the hill :( it almost took as long to line up than to hike up

peek-a-boo

oh no, tree skiing is bad :)