Skiing --- February 1997 --- Lake Tahoe, CA

Week of skiing. The pictures and descriptions in this album were copied from the skigroup's web site.

A bunch of new snow fell the day before we arrived so conditions were great. The whole week we were there it was sunny and warm. Never got to ski in fresh powder, but can't complain about the weather.

The slopes were empty and we never waited in a lift line. Part of the reason is that it is reasonably late in the season. Also route 50 (the main road from Sacramento) washed out, so the Californians stayed home.

Sunday we skied Kirkwood. Monday was Heavenly (where we were staying). Tuesday some folks went to Squaw, and I took a group XC skiing at Spooner Lake. 10 miles of XC skiing at 7500 feet was a pretty exhausting day. Wednesday was an off day. The four half-weekers left and the rest of us spent the day playing cards and Monopoly. Actually, we spent the day losing to Lori who won every single game she played. Thursday we skied Squaw (with a few folks going to Northstar) and Friday we skied Heavenly again.

The scenery was fantastic everywhere. The view of Lake Tahoe (22 miles by 11 miles at 5000 feet) was stunning. At Spooner Lake we stopped and ate lunch on a mountain overlooking the lake. Blanketed in snow and forest there wasn't another sound to be heard. I have to say that Heavenly was the nicest downhill resort I have ever been to. It straddles the California/Nevada state line, so you can ski back and forth between the states. On the Nevada side you get a fantastic view of the desert spreading out as far as the eye can see.

Each day we would try to "cheat death" by skiing to the far side of the mountain just as the lifts closed. That way we had to get another ride to the top so we could ski back to the lodge. On the very last day we were doing this and Lori managed to fall and hurt her knee. It ended up not being serious. At the time we were worried as the ski patrol brought her down in a sled (Lori also got a snowmobile ride earlier in the week by taking a lift to trails she couldn't ski down). Everyone was worried that Brian would blame them for the accident, so they decided to pin the whole incident on me. Actually I had been trying to talk Lori into skiing a black diamond on the way down. Luckily she didn't get hurt there or it really would have been my fault.

The first two days of downhill I used the new parabolic skis. The last two days I used regular skis. The parabolic were definitely better. I couldn't tell at first, but going back to the regular skis made the difference obvious.

I never fell the whole time, which was one of my goals. The second half of the last day I was skiing the double black diamonds on the bottom of the California side of Heavenly. It was so steep and the moguls so big that I caught my thermos (hanging from my pack) on a mogul. My thermos carrier strap broke loose and the thermos plummeted down the mountain. It didn't stop until the bottom (where I was able to retrieve it). Kind of funny to watch it bouncing down. People who fell on this slope often did the exact same thing. I skied those double blacks four times and it was even more exhausting than the XC skiing earlier in the week.

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