Timeless

From the Tahoe weather blog, this one has been spot on with the weather patterns for the season so far: "The trend should continue with small storms taking aim at the West Coast into the following weekend. Beginning the third week of January (the week of the 18th) it looks as if a true El Nino pattern is going to try and take shape. Models are already catching onto the idea of the ridge building in from the Pacific NW up into British Columbia, with the jetstream coming under the ridge into CA. This is when we should begin to see larger storms start to enter CA. Thinking that January should be the opposite of March, in like a lamb and out like a lion" Looks like groomers and sunshine until late January then a better chance of some serious storms.

No haters here, I'm not sure who would have voted CB as the best in PA, certainly wasn't me. I stand by my statement that they do a decent job with what they have to deal with, but not best in PA.

What was your planned list of resorts? From the local weather blogs, it looks like you may be timing your trip well, they are having a period of dry sunny weather ("for maybe 10 days") before the next storm cycle sets up, they expect mid to late January to be very stormy with high snow totals. Fingers crossed.

You should get used to that, you will see a lot of those conidtions if your in the resort and it's not snowing everyday. Wow, you're really not selling WP very well.

Only once and it was pretty ropey (conditions wise), not fair to make comparisons as we only went there looking for better conditions because the weather had been bad and it's further north so most places would most likely have been as bad or worse. Are they generally better at grooming? Given the general low rent vibe of the place I wouldn't imagine they would invest too much in this compared to letting the "real skiers" get some bumps.

I'm not sure which is funnier, hearing PA resorts call sheet ice "packed powder" or hearing people in the west coast resorts claiming "ice" everytime the hear the slightest noise coming from an edge. Anyway, congrat's for making the break, it will be hard to go back.

I cant comment for this season, but for the past 6 years I think CB has been pretty decent with the grooming, probably second only to JF in PA. If you get there after 10am on a weekend then it really doesn't matter how they groomed it, it's going to be rough. Bottom line, they do a decent job with what they have, and what they have to recover from due to weather and traffic. Blue could certainly take a few tips from them.

Doug, After the last few years listening to you(and others)going on endlessly about how many vertical feet he racked-up each trip to blue mountain, it seems wierd to hear that you have switched this off for this season. Seems like a good thing for you thought, I always thought you were a little obsessive about it.

So putting my garmin output vert tracking into the stat's manager was quite enlightening, I expected my averages to be lower but they are actually pretty high for me, seems either riding big hills racks it up a lot quicker (and with less effort) or I have been under-estimating quite a lot in the past (or my Garmin is full of !@%$). Anyway, I was most surprised to see no sign of GSS in the tables, what's going on? There seem to be quite a few of the old vert-hounds missing. And to those of you that take this really seriously, don't worry about my rapidly escalating numbers, I won't be going again for a couple of weeks and I don't expect to ride anything like as often as this past week in rest of the season.

No pictures this time, we went to Squaw on Friday and you could hardly see let alone take pictures. It was snowing when we arrived (8.30) and they had maybe 2-3 inches of fresh snow on the ground, but anything above high camp was so windy and snowy that it was impossible to ride. So we headed over to the lower lifts (red dog?) and took some decent runs down from there, thought about KT-22 but the conditions weren't appealing so we went back up to the top and dropped over the back into an area call shirley lake. This was pretty damn good, got quite bumped up and there were quite a few people over there but there was a sweet traverse out into a wide chute that had nice conditions. A couple of runs there and then down to Rainbow Bowl before heading back over the ridge and picking a couple of top to bottom runs. By this time it was bordeline raining at the base and we were getting pretty wet so we called it a day at 2pm and went back to the house for a hot tub. Overall impressions of squaw valley, it's big and has some great terrain. I will definitely be back there in better weather. It seemed quite rocky and could have done with several feet more base to make some of the faces rideable (at least for me), I'm looking forward to going back sometime this season, but have lots of other places to try / revisit first. My new toy that I got to use while I was there is a Garmin Dakota 20 with the mountain dynamics "snowranger" maps on it. This gives you trails maps and a compass, altitude reading etc, but also tracks your route around the mountain, records vertical feet and runs and allows you to overlay your trail on a map on their website afterwards. They even offer a tracking page where you can upload your tracks and it keeps running totals of your stats. It also shows you individual run details of speed, elevation etc, pretty fun if you are into that kind of thing. So no more guessing for me, I can report 15 runs and 17,284 feet at squaw, not bad considering the conditions.

Nice Pic's, gotta love Utah. Can't wait to get back out there this year.

2 for 1 trip report today, at least with a couple of pictures this time. Tuesday @ Sugarbowl Blue skies and an official snow report of 2-4 inches of fresh light powder at lake level, with maybe 8 inches at the crest made this a beautiful day to be on the mountain. It seemed like more snow than reported, maybe just because it was already on top of a decent base of recent snow. Anyway, for me Sugarbowl was a nice surprise, with lots of decent and varied terrain and what looked like a decent park to top it off. Not being a park person it's hard for me to judge properly but there was lots of it, with decent sized and well maintained jumps. The trees were nicely spaced and with long runs down through them we had a lot of fun and no trouble with the crowds I expected to find there. Which brings me to my first real observations, the place was really busy at the lodges and parking lots, there were lift lines that were quite long but not as bad as say camelback on a normal saturday, but the slopes were deserted, and the few people that were out there were sticking to the groomers despite wide open fields of loose, soft powder. It seesm that there were a whole load of people there that just wanted to "be there", not really in it for the skiing / riding. Wierd to me. So we did lots of runs off of Judah and Jerome lifts before moving over to the middle section on disney mountain and found some more wide open runs with trees and powder, awesome, it just kept coming. A good measure of how good it is with my kids is how often they ask to stop for hot chocolate, and "lunch". We spent the sum total of about 20 minutes at a lodge all day. one other comment on the resort, the approach road from the truckee side is not for the faint hearted on snowy roads, the views are spectacular but it's not something I would want to do in a hurry. It must be easier coming from the bay area off of I-80 or they would never have so many people there. So overall, a great day, lovely conditions, a good resort for all abilities. Definitley recommend this one. Wednesday @ Northstar Oh my God, what a ClusterF' Getting from our house to the slopes took us 2 hours, with what should have been a 20 minute drive. The sheer number of people runing into that resort was horrendous, they made us park on the outlying areas and shuttle bus in, the gondola that you have to take to get on the mountain was queued out the wazoo, just generally a horrible experience when there is a reported "up to a foot" of fress powder on the hill. Note for future, if going there in a holiday period, go early. First run down and it was all worth it, deep soft powder everywhere, manageable lift lines, especially on the backside area which was my personal favorite, steep(ish) mile long blacks with 8-12" of fresh, lots of ncely gladed trees between the runs, really a fantastic experience (especially for your 4th ski day of the year). Conditions stayed pretty good all day, we found a few good runs down off of Pluto as well but we avoided the east ridge area as it seem to be where all the "look at me I'm skiing" families tend to hang out. By 3pm we were all exhausted and the sun had come out so we took a couple of groomer runs down the middle and called it a day. Awesome riding day, maybe one of the best, but the entry experience was not one I want to repeat anytime soon. Cheers all, hope you are all getting some in PA too.

I'm out west, there is no contest, I'm never going to miss riding in the east. Having said that, learning to ride in the east is definitely a plus, some of the people out herte don't appreciate what they have.

Hey all, quick update / trip report. Not much in the way of pictures 'cos it was pretty grey today, snowing on and off but here's a quick peek from the top of the lakeview chair at Alpine Meadows. so the conditions today were so-so by local standards but to me it was f'in fantastic, and I am completely impressed by Alpine Meadows, it's all quite steep which concerned my kids a bit to begin with, but a few runs in and they were rippin down. We spent the first half dozen runs off the roundhouse lift which is mostly blue groomers and plenty of option for cutting between trails on more interesting stuff. Then we headed over to the lake side and did 8 runs off of the lakeview lift and 4 off of the sherwood which gave some more challenging options before heading to the mid mountain lodge for lunch. After lunch we headed up to the summit for some runs through the bowls, which were super soft and powdery, with them having some pretty consistent snow over the last few days, we are averaging 3-5 inches a day which is great, just waiting for a bigger dump on wednesday. To Phillycore, make sure you add Alpine to your list, it's the closest thing to Snowbird I've seen for a while and good for intermediates and up, don't bring any beginners or low inter's. That's all for me for now, will try to get more pic's tomorrow, I think we are going to Sugarbowl.

your welcome, I'll make sure there are plenty more from next week and as many times as I can get up there this season.

a few pics the approach from 267, this just appears out of the mist lots of soft stuff in the trees my son giving his early season legs some warm up my daughter enjoying the opening day groomers

Hi All, I kicked off my season this weekend with a Saturday at Northstar, my first time in Tahoe. I'll post up a couple of pictures from home later: Arrived at Truckee on Friday night, the drive up from home turns out to be 3 1/2 to 4 hours all in and we stayed at the Hampton inn on Rt 267, very nice place, highly recommended especially if you are headed to Northstar which is just down the road (about 5 miles). So we started the day at 8.30 with the 3 lift ride to the peak (gondola + arrow quad + comstock quad) and ran both sides off of this lift for most of the morning. There was lots of good stuff to be had with 80+ trails open and plently of deep soft snow in the trees. The off-trail stuff was a few days old so needed a bit of care near the trails where it wasn't shaded by the trees, but beyond that it was smooth and really fun. As I was with the kids we stayed mostly on the trails (I have to pretend to be responsible some times ). Anyway, we had lunch at 11.30 at the summit (nice chilli and corn bread) then went to explore the "backside" area and Lookout mountain areas. Here we found some really nice black runs, really long sustained pitch groomers with a really nice loose surface which was not getting too soft even though it was 45 degrees and really nice and sunny. We spent most of the day alternating between the backside and some nice intermediate groomers on the Pluto side, with nice little detours between trails through the woods. This was the first time my kids have ski'd or ridden "out west" and they were blown away by the size and open-ness, even though NS is one of the smaller places out here. By 3.30 we were all exhausted, my legs had turned to mush about 30 minutes before that so we stopped as it was our first day and we had managed almost open to close. It was a beautiful day, warm, sunny, great conditions and overall I really liked Northstar. If you are an advancing intermediate or slightly higher (or really like riding in the trees) you would love it, plenty of variety. The staff were also really nice and the whole place is very well run. Despite the fact that there seemed to be thousands of cars when we left, the runs we relatively quiet all day except for a couple near the day lodge. Definitely my best opening day ever, we are heading back up on Saturday for a week in a rental house, going to be hitting Squaw, Alpine (this is where the house is), Sugarbowl and Northstar again, we might even venture down to Sierra-at-Tahoe. More storms are predicted for next week so fingers crossed we'll be in fresh powder. And to all those (like me before) that fall for the "sierra cement" idea, you need to get over it. The snow was as good as most of what you will find in Utah (except for a few exceptionally light events in the cottonwoods) and way better than I've seen in 6 years in the north east. More reports (with pic's) next week, and some pictures later. Cheers

Dress up as a schoolgirl, PA and VT do free passes to all the major resorts. make sure you get pic's of you attempting this, and good luck......

Depends if you have plenty of vacation time, or plenty of money. The price you will pay for flights within a week of your travel date will be at least twice what you will pay if you just choose somewhere now and hope for the best. If money is no object then it sounds like a great plan, you should get enough visibility a week in advance to know which areas (ie CO, UT, PNW etc) are getting the storm cycles and from there you just need to choose a central location (like PC or SLC) and head for the best resort each day. That said, at the time you are talking about, the chances of getting poor conditions in most of the major venues is pretty slim, and on top of that with your plan you risk the likleyhood of flying into delays and cancellations and missing the storm you are chasing anyway. My $0.02, choose somewhere now and if it's not all you hoped for, use the money you saved for another trip towards the end of the season. I've been to UT for the last 4 years in the spring and have had great conditions for at least part of every trip.

couldn't agree more, I'm on my second pair of smarty cargo's, first pair went three years and only needed to be replaced because I lost weight and they were a little large, and secondly I lost quite a lot of waterproofing when I slid over rocks and gravel on them on my arse at camelback in the spring, even after this they are still pretty warm/dry etc. Second pair are now 3 seasons old and going strong, no thought of replacing them anytime soon and I ride quite a lot of days each season. My only issue with 686 is that they got too "clever", with lots of artsy prints and gimmicks, the original smarty gear was the best by far IMO.

Sounds great, getting a little wet isn't likely to be a downside here in Morgan Hill, at least for a substantial part of the year. Sounds like a great way to spend summer weekends.

Has anyone tried to ski/ride on the "snowflex" material? I went to the Snowbomb Expo in santa clara yesterday and found out they are building a snowflex park less than a half mile from my house (line of sight), about a mile by road. I should be able to see it from my deck. It's supposed to be opening next year and according to the girl on the booth it's one of the biggest ones they've done. Not much in the way of specifics at www.morganhillsnowflex.com but I'm pretty excited about a 365 day a year park in my neighbourhood for those days when Tahoe is not an option.

Yes, I bought a board from them. Arrived with a scrape in the base but they gave me some money back for the damage as it was obviously done before it was packed. No problems with them for delivery or customer service.

If you know what size you need (1/2 size larger than he has now?)and what brands tend to fit him then there are plenty of good deals on line, try sierrasnowboard.com or one of the many others out there. Most places are fine with you ordering 2 pairs and sending one back. I feel your pain with the growing kids thing, I have two going through equipment at a rate I find hard to comprehend and another about to get her first set of ski's. Boots are really important though.

Strangely, the same thought had occurred to us, even with Morgan Hill being less extreme than Los Gatos, the appeal of buying in Tahoe and renting here until the kids are out of the house is quite appealing.