Heavenly, CA and NV 3/8/2016

tseeb

Well-known member
My friend had to meet lady he works with at Heavenly (who reported 6" new and 25" in last three day) CA base at 8:45, to buy her a discount ticket using his pass. While he was taking care of that, I got in line at Gunbarrel and got third chair on bluebird powder day. I went to top and had three laps on Sky chair before crowds drove me to Nevada after 4th ride up. First lap I skied Ellie's from the top, then got 2nd tracks under lift - 1st were probably ski patrol. My 2nd and 3rd laps I left Skyline Trail on Pinnacles, then cut left and skied a lot of untracked all the way to bottom. I moved to NV, taking high traverse into Milky Way Bowl where I found lightly tracked snow with a very light crust in first treeline after avoiding all the traversers heading? I found a lot more untracked towards bottom where gates were still closed going to Mott Canyon. I took a lap on Dipper skiing Dipper Bowl, then with a 10-step hike got on top of 400' knoll above Nova run for totally untracked. Next time at the top I took highest traverse to Gate A into Killibrew Canyon. I should have stayed on open slope which had very good lightly tracked snow, but went into Pipeline and found a lot of it had slid. Once it widened, I cut right into some steep untracked that got me to top of hill by Boundary Chutes which also skied well even though partially tracked. I took two more laps into Mott Canyon which skied better than expected considering the steepness, shallowness of new snow and number of people going into it. Before quitting for lunch, I took one more lap on Dipper where I found a great long untracked line next to Dipper Bowl, then repeated the short hike above Nova, where there was still a lot of untracked.

After skiing more untracked in the usually bony trees next to runs on Tamarack chair twice, I met my friend and his co-worker at noon for lunch at huge, but very busy Tamarack lodge. After lunch, it was hard to warm up as clouds had moved in and winds picked up and it soon started snowing. My friend decided that one ride on Dipper chair was enough so with skied to CA where we rode Canyon chair three times. I could not find untracked that lasted for more than a couple of turns. We next headed down the mountain, them on one of the Mombo runs, me on Waterfall. After riding Groove chair, I led them through hard to find and follow Upper Roundabout, bypassing some rocky untracked on the way down. Packed snow got very dense on Roundabout run so I took a couple of shortcuts dropping down where run continued to hairpin corners. I passed on Gunbarrel as it was new snow on big moguls and I was on big powder skis. We all skied the lower Face where packed snow was good, but seemed like very dense man-made. I quit at 2:30 PM with 21K and we all went to join other former co-workers at Blue Angels Cafe on Ski Run Blvd for early Apres before packing cabin and long drive back to San Jose.
 

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