| Snow Festival, 3/3 |
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.
People trying to keep warm while watching the crowning of the Snow Queen. That's snow, not rain!
Some very cold potential snow queens!
They had a small laser show going on, projecting images on the snow out in front of the deck. It was snowing so hard that the laser streaks were actually more interesting than the little line images on the snow.
The beginning of the torchlight parade. We're guessing there were roughly 100 skiers and boarders in the parade... this is the first group just coming into view.
Each person had one or two flares on the ends of long sticks.
The first ones arriving at the base.
They tossed all the flares into a pile. It eventually turned into a small but very hot bonfire.
The bonfire. At this point I'm not sure if we were witnessing some strange Pagan ritual.
The bonfire grows.
The fireworks were cool. We'd never seen them in snow before. Almost all of the shots have snow lit by laser light in them, and the long exposure actually makes them look better here than they did in real life!
Part of the grand finale.