This is a collection of my blog entries about snowboarding.
You can find all the pictures I've taken here, and read below for the more recent trips that I have recorded in blog entries:
4ft+ of snow finally coming to Tahoe, after so little for so long, finally! It was time to go.
The snow line wasn't too low when I started driving up, except for a bit of surprise slush when I was passing a truck. Thankfully my tesla stability control, did the right thing:
strangely, the road was quite clear higher up (localized snowfalls)
Carson Spur was still in very good shape
After a bit under 4H, including a 20mn recharging stop in Manteca, I arrived at Kirkwood just before 15:00:
Sadly, by then only solitude was open, I did 2 runs that weren't bad but on my 2nd run up, I got the very bad news that while Vail said they would stay open that same morning, a few hours later, while I drove up, changed their minds and closed off everything for the season due to COVID-19. Needless to say that I wasn't happy that they couldn't make that decision in the morning, and mislead everyone into coming:
those were 2 expensive runs
Now, life sucked, it was clear that I had to leave kirkwood as quickly as possible, as the weather was worsening, but my car was very discharged. I had to recharge it just enough to get out and hopefully make it to some charging source under the snow line.
I had to take the Omo Ranch Rd by Cook's Station to get the shortest path to the Placerville Supercharger, where I barely arrived with a 5% of battery left. Omo Ranch Rd, while open, is not a safe road with snow, and doesn't get plowed. The top was dicey and I had the tradeoff of getting down quickly to get out of the snow line, without driving off the road due to snow.
The tesla estimator has been very wrong, on the trip out, it told me I'd arrive with 14%, but I arrived with 5% while driving quite slow and taking an unsafe road (the safe road around would not have gotten me there with enough battery left):
estimator went from 14% to 9% to 5% by the time I arrived
thankfully it stabilized at 5%
on the plus side, the new superchargers are fast, I got back to 80% in 30mn
That's definitely been my worst snow trip ever, except for the fact that I avoided crashing my car on the way up after that slide, or running out of battery and having my car die on the side of the road in a snowstorm.
