Sierra-at-Tahoe, CA 1/26/2017

tseeb

Well-known member
Sierra-at-Tahoe delivered for me again as it has many times in previous years including my 2nd FirstTraks post viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2886 almost 10 years ago when I had my deepest day ever with 58" new, Both my two days there last year were powder days. Some year I should drop my Tahoe Local and Mountain Collective passes and get one for Sierra instead. It was $399 for this year's unrestricted pass which includes four days at Squaw and three slightly restricted days at 14 Powder Alliance resorts (//www.powderalliance.com/)

A friend drove up from San Jose and we both used free Tues-Thur tickets from ski show. He beat me there as I had spent about 30 minutes in South Lake Tahoe getting pole basket installed. Following picture was taken at Sierra-at-Tahoe when I arrived. It may under-represent how high the snowbanks are by parking lot as I was trying to include Pyramid Peak in the picture.
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For my first run, I skied trees between Preacher's Passion and Castle and found some deep tracked powder, but I was way too stiff to ski it well. I took a Backside run and Short Stuff chair to get to West Bowl where I met up with friend. We took some runs to lookers right at top of the chair where I found some leftover powder on the edges. For my last West Bowl run I went down Dogwood, then ducked into trees to left were I had spotted a lot of untracked.

I returned to Grandview chair and talked to ski patrolwoman at the top to see if sidecountry gate 3 that I had done previously would open. I've never gotten to terrain in background of this picture, but have entered gate that got me off ridge in foreground.
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She said no, but that Gate 2 - North Bowl, was skiing well. I skied down bumped out Eastabout and took the gate, then followed a couple doing about 50 side-steps which led to untracked E-facing which may have just opened for first time after latest storms. I took two laps there before lunch and it was my steepest, deepest and driest untracked snow of the week.
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The first lap included a drop that was so steep that both I and the guy following me could not believe they were letting us ski it and we later shared some some avy concerns. I only planned one lap after lunch, but it was so good I did three more, pushing further right and lower, but never too low to miss exit. I always went into untracked to right of/below these tracks. Lake Tahoe visible at top left
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The drop was only about 500 vertical feet and the exit required one moderate and one small uphill plus a couple of short uphills that could be avoided with enough speed. Picture taken at 2:22 PM on 2nd to last lap. I finished my day with two runs lookers right off Grandview, first skiing some powder next to Hemlock, then more next to and into Chute, then I repeated Hemlock finishing with Lower Main and more powder in trees next to it and 23.5K.
 

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Adding a couple of pictures I took of guy with whom I skied first two side-country laps. I was trying to take some scenics, when he skied though so I included him, then iPhone 5s went into burst mode and took almost 30 pictures. I e-mailed him 18 of them. After I took pictures he asked if I wanted to ski the rest of the way with him as he had never been out that gate and had been in Sierra's side country way less than me so we skied rest of that run and the next run together.
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