Monkey

Squaw was a real mixed bag this trip in terms of weather and snow conditions, but on the whole we came away super-happy, which is par for the course at this place. From the 25th thru the 27th we went from so-so to pure crap to awesome, and ended on the high note.

Wednesday the 25th was windy again, with a lot of the mountain closed early in the morning. They eventually opened up the Funitel and Shirley Lake, so Helen and I went up and had a good time lapping the mellow Shirley Lake runs. Eventually they opened up Granite Chief and I got right up there to find lots of very nice untracked powder. The area had been closed for a couple of days at that point, and it’s a bit more sheltered from the high wind that really packed the snow elsewhere on the mountain. There were many excellent runs with untracked anywhere from 6-8″ deep. Not super deep nor super light, but excellent all the same. Once the area was pretty much tracked out I called it day.

Thursday the 26th was horrible. Only KT-22, Red Dog, and Squaw Creek were running. Helen and I went up Red Dog and took just 3 runs before packing it in. The wind was amazing, and the gusts were nuts sometimes, causing everyone to hunker down and shield their faces from the ice pellets driven by the wind. Ouch. We, uh, didn’t lose any money on the day, though due to a super-nice guy cutting us a break… I’ll leave it at that to protect the innocent.

Friday the 27th: ahhh… the reason I love Squaw. Really, this place is excellent on the right kind of day. Bluebird, pretty much everything open, and fresh snow everywhere. Little to no wind, and almost everything you could see (98%) you could take a lift to and ride without hiking in or out. All of the pictures here are from Friday. Helen and I got up early and got in line for the Funitel before it opened. The line drained fast and we were up on the Gold Coast in no time. We lapped the Gold Coast Express a few times for some low-angle untracked, since everyone goes to the steeper stuff in a frenzy on a pow day there. Then we moved over to Siberia Express and helped track up Siberia Ridge and Bowl, which was an extraordinary amount of fun. The Palisades were looking sweet so I went for a hike and took a line down Main Chute that was most excellent, with soft wind-packed snow all the way down, and super-high-speed turns down into the bowl. I really should have done it again, but I’m in terrible shape for hiking these days. Eventually Helen’s ankle got the best of her and she went it. I stayed out and took more laps on Siberia then moved to the Headwall Express. Sun Bowl, The Slot, Cornice II Bowl, headwall Face, and North Bowl all held excellent snow even though it was all tracked up by this point. Finally, before my legs went to complete jello, I went for one last KT-22 run and went down under the Olympic Lady double, which I’ve never seen run, back to the bottom.

All-in-all, 4 days at Squaw and two of them were fantastic. In those two days alone I clocked 39 runs and 48,970 feet of vertical, most of it some damn fine snow. The other two days amounted to about a third of that.

The drive was excellent both ways, too… either I’ll make a separate post on that, or Helen will. Helen has a post with some of the drive down here: http://www.frygirl.com/frygirlblogs/?p=204

Finally, major kudos to the PlumpJack Squaw Valley Inn, which is right in the village next to the tram house. We’ve stayed there before, and we enjoyed the stay again. Two cool things here: first, on Thursday night a ski club rolled in and decided to have a major party in the top-floor rooms that kept everyone awake until just past 1pm. I talked to them, others talked to them, security talked to them, and although it took them longer than I would have liked to resolve the problem, they comp’d us the room for that night without us even asking ($269 + tax). Nice. Second, even though we’d reserved the room for the week we were able to check out a day early without penalty (we wanted to explore more on the drive home). The breakfast buffet each morning was again the shiznizzle, and I’m sure we’ll stay there on our next visit.

I had a good time today at Squaw. It was bright and clear, and even though there was still high winds and the vast majority of the place was on wind hold or outright closed, I decided to go up anyway.

Helen didn’t join me today. She’s still nursing a large blister on her ankle, and since the conditions looked a bit marginal she went down to Tahoe City and relaxed and did a bit of sketching.

I bought my ticket around 9am and headed over to KT-22, which was the only lift open that I cared to ride. It turned out that most of KT-22 was closed: all of what I would call “the front” (GS Bowl, etc.) all the way around the Nose to just before Rock Garden was off limits today. The only options were Rock Garden, Saddle, and the stuff just past the Saddle on riders left. So I ended up lapping Rock Garden until I found a sweet line that most people were avoiding due to the sketchy entrance. I ended up lapping that one line 5 or 6 times out of the 10 KT-22 runs I did make. I went over to the Far East Express (Red Dog wasn’t running) and took one run there, but went right back to KT-22.

The snow up there was a real mixed bag. They had up to 18″ in the last storm, but the wind has been really howling here since then and it’s taken its toll. It’s either super-wind-packed, or hard-pack up there. Not much else, and not much ice thankfully. The line I liked in Rock Garden was good because the wind-packed parts were less packed and had broken up into some nice softness that you could make long high-speed turns on before hitting the chop below. In the morning, before the sun had a chance to do its work, the lower part of the mountain was essentially ice, so I (and pretty much everyone else from what I could tell) stuck to the groomers on the way back to the lift. As the day wore on the sun turned almost everything it hit down low to slush. Things stayed nicer up-top for the most part, but it still got heavy.

I took a siesta in the room for lunch, and when I went back out around 2pm the Funitel was running, as were the Gold Coast Express and Shirley Lake Express, so I headed over that way. Pretty crowded over there, since it’s all blue and all the intermediates flocked to the place. I found some really nice, untracked heavy pow in the trees far riders right on Shirley Lake. The trees are really nicely spaced over there, too, so I did something like 8 high-speed laps through the trees, laying down fresh lines for at least a third of each run. Even though it was heavy (almost slushy in spots) it was nice to get something I could sink the board into a bit more.

Overall, an excellent day. Except for the hour and a half or so of relaxing during lunch I rode the whole day, and got close to last chair up Shirley Lake before heading back. They gave out vouchers for $17 off your next lift ticket purchase since so much was closed, but honestly I feel like I got my money’s worth today.

I’m hopeful they’ll open up more of the upper mountain tomorrow, but I know that even though it looks nice from a distance it will all be pretty wind packed. It should still be a good time, though.

First day in Squaw and not off to a great start. Heavy rain at the base, high winds even at the base (quite literally howling outside my window), and no upper-mountain lifts running. The highest thing they got running was KT-22, and that went on wind-hold periodically. At $79 a lift ticket I opted to hang out in the room and see if they managed to get any upper mountain lifts running. At noon they officially gave up and left it all closed, and at $59 for a half-day ticket I couldn’t see going to ride in the rain for at least half of every run.

They reported 11-12″ of new snow overnight at the summit… let’s hope that survived. If I’m lucky, they’ll open the upper mountain tomorrow with more fresh on top of what they got last night… fingers crossed.

Helen and I took a nice, long road trip and went from Seattle, to Jackson Hole, WY, to Squaw Valley, CA, and back from 2/18/2006 thru 3/6/2006. We spent 7 nights in JH, and 8 nights in Squaw. We also spent some time sightseeing in northern Nevada along route 50. We drove 3130 miles! Here are the pictures from the Squaw Valley part of the trip.