Kirkwood 3/29/07

[CaptDave]

Made my first trip to Kirkwood on Thursday 3/29. The drive took about 90 minutes from Squaw Valley in perfect road conditions. Nice scenic ride down the west side of Lake Tahoe and then up over Carson Pass. Arrived about 9AM, temps in the upper 20s/low 30s. Vertical is about 2000 feet. Snowfall is down big time this year. They are accustomed to receiving 500 + inches and they are just over 300 inches for the season. Monday night/Tuesday morning they received two feet of snow and I thought the snow was excellent on this day. By 3PM temps were in the low 50s under crystal blue skies. Glad I applied some sun lotion to my face. All the lifts up top were high speed quads which was sweet. They also do high angle grooming on some trails. We stuck to those at first until we could see what we were getting into.

 

Started with two runs off Solitude lift which is intermediate terrain. Then took Chair 6 "Cornice Express" up top. Did a few runs down groomed trail Zachary, which has a nice headwall. After that a few runs down Sentinel Bowl. Next stop Chair 10 "Wagon Wheel" and The Wall. Very steep bump run. Kicked my butt first few tries, but I finally made my way down slowly. Snow was softening up nice at this time of day. Legs were burning after my stint with The Wall so it was time for a break, quick lunch and a beer. Worked our way over to chair 4 "Sunrise". Its on left side of the resort boundary. Some variety of intermediate and advanced trails over this way. Pretty wide open. Would be so awesome on a powder day. They groom some tracks on this side as well. Stayed over on this side until about 3PM and called it quits. Kirkwood was hosting the North American Freeskiing Championship this week. An extreme skiing/riding event. They were competiting off of a rock formation called Cirque which is normally closed to the public. Watched a little bit of that. Wow, definitely not a place to screw up.

 

Glad I had the chance to get here once. Definitely was riding steeper terrain then accustomed to but thats how you progress. Hope to come back some day.

[Schif]

Sounds awesome CaptDave. I took a look at the trail map and kirkwood really looks awesome. Seems like there is a decent amount of skiiing above the treeline there, especially off of the sunrise lift. Glad to hear you had a great day on a sweet looking mountain.

[CaptDave]

Sounds awesome CaptDave. I took a look at the trail map and kirkwood really looks awesome. Seems like there is a decent amount of skiiing above the treeline there, especially off of the sunrise lift. Glad to hear you had a great day on a sweet looking mountain.

 

 

I have one photo up in an album. I took it during the lunch break. I need to do some tweaking and resize the other so they are small enough to upload.