| Squaw Valley, 2/26 - 3/5 |
We stayed at Squaw Valley USA for the second half of our trip. Squaw Valley is a great ski area in its on right, but it's also very close to about a dozen other ski areas scattered around Lake Tahoe which makes it a great base for riding at multiple areas. We plan to ride 3-4 days here at Squaw, and to hit up Kirkwood to the South and perhaps one other area on the north end of the lake that we've never been to yet.
We stayed in Jackson on the cheap in the Hostel X, which was a lot of fun. But we went the other way here in Squaw, staying in the PlumpJack Squaw Valley Inn, which is in the base area right next to the tram building. (If I could carry a little more speed entering the base area I might be able to ride back to it, but the base area here is really flat.) The pictures on the web site are pretty representative, but we'll try to get some of our room later. The room is amazingly comfortable and surprisingly big. We got their only kitchen suite, so we've been making our own dinners in the evenings.
Conditions for each day at Squaw:
| 2/27 | A whole lot of rain, all the way to the top of the mountain. Brutal! We didn't ride. |
| 2/28 | A few inches of new snow everywhere. We went to Kirkwood instead: 10" of fresh there! |
| 3/1 | 5-7" of new snow up top, and mostly clear skies. Beautiful day! |
| 3/2 | 12" of light fresh snow, with poor visibility. KT-22 was awesome though... didn't bother to ride anywhere else! |
| 3/3 | Another 12"+ of light fresh snow with good visibility on the lower mountain. More than knee deep in many places. Fantastic! |
| 3/4 | The storm total is over 3ft, and it's was a beautiful sunny day. The crowds at Squaw promised to be huge, so we went over to Alpine Meadows instead. |
| 3/5 | Mostly sunny, no new snow. The snow quality was still good, but it was very windy! |
Approaching a "stupid amount of snow"
As of Friday evening, 3/3, there is what can only be described as a stupid amount of snow on the mountain. Thursday night I had to go out to the car to get a powder board for Helen. The car was covered in snow, so I took some pictures and cleared it off. Friday afternoon I went out just to see how much snow was on the car. Below is the result. I'm glad I remembered where I parked. And it's still snowing... dumping, actually.
24 hour snow accumulation on our car, from 5pm 3/2 to 5pm 3/3. Really, there is a Subaru Outback with a box on top under there!
Snow Festival
On
Friday evening, 3/3, they held the opening festivities for the week long
North Tahoe Snow Festival, with a torchlight parade, fireworks, and even
the crowning of a snow queen complete with drama as there was a tie and
two queens were crowned. (No, I'm not making this up.) It was still
dumping snow, so we were wondering how they were going to pull it all
off, but they did a really good job of it actually. They moved the
parade and fireworks to the hill right under the Exhibition chair so it
was all reasonably visible from the patios and bars in the base area.
Helen got some really great pictures of the laser light show, the
torchlight parade, and the fireworks. Click on the picture, or follow
this link to see the pictures.
Misc Pictures
3/1: The view from our room.
3/1: View of the Granite Chief area from the base of that lift.
3/1: another view of the Granite Chief area.
3/1: Mike in some bowl skier's left of the Granite Chief lift.
3/1: The view of Lake Tahoe from the top of the Headwall chair.
3/2: The snow on my car at about 5pm on 3/2.
3/2: Another view of the snow accumulation. The morning of 3/2 was epic, but I got no pictures because I was too busy riding :)
3/3: Helen somewhere under the Red Dog or Squaw Creek chair. He legs aren't really that short... she's stopped in knee-deep pow.
3/4: The final shot of the buried car after the storm.
3/4: Digging the car out... it took a little while...