South Lake Tahoe, CA and NV 12/10-12/18

tseeb

Well-known member
Kirkwood, CA 12/10

I skied Kirkwood last Monday with my son and a friend of his. They were on their 3rd day and on way home from our family cabin and I was on my way there. Kirkwood was running all lifts and only missing a run or two that require more filling in. Decent coverage except near bottom of steep part of Zachary where run was pinched and thin. Backside had some nice windsift. The road is in on the Wall which made for much easier and cleaner entrance than 8 days ago. There were some firm spots, but I had a fresh tune that was working great. Pictures are my son and his friend (in rust-colored pants) on Backside and entering Thunder Saddle.
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Heavenly, CA and NV 12/11

My 1st day of the year at Heavenly. I got to top of Tram from CA base well before 930, but while heel of one of my aAAttack 13s with <140 days on it clicked in, the release lever had an inch or two of play and I was able to lift rear of boot up almost an inch. So I downloaded Gunbarrel chair and went into shop at base. They and the next 3 shops in town couldn't help me much as it seemed to be an internal problem. The last shop had demos they needed to get rid of and sold me Head Rev 3 88 waist with Marker demo bindings for about the same price as a one day demo. At 177, I thought they may be a little short, but they said if I didn't like them, they would move bindings to my skis for $25. Either way avoids paying a Vail-price for demo at Kirkwood Wednesday. (Note that after demoing problem with binding in at least three of the shops, I checked them out again when I got home after reading a post about a similar problem and mine seem OK. It's possible that problem was from water freezing inside the binding as I saw some of the outside of the heel.)

So after a 90 min delay I went back up CA side and skied Milky Way Bowl into NV. Snow was good, but there were many rocks to avoid especially towards sunnier left side and you had to traverse left since usual exit had big whoop-de-doos where you want to be tucking to make the uphill. Skis worked well and seemed stable at speed. It was the first day of the year for Olympic chair where some of the snow seemed to be high water content man-made. I skied Milky Way Bowl 4x (twice coming in from high on the right), Dipper Bowl 2x (once entering from Dipper Run) and CA Trail many times. I skied all of Little Dipper run under Comet chair once. While the shorter length skis worked in bumps there and on Dipper, runs were treacherous with rocks on the back of many bumps and in troughs so I had to dial back my speed.

12/12/18 Kirkwood, CA

It was somewhat of a drive-by as after cleaning and closing the cabin, I did not get on the road until after nine. While I only skied from a little after 10 to about 2, my watch and EpicMix (really EpicMiss as I had to add 4 missing Cornice chairs - seems really bad in PM, maybe I'm skiing onto lift too fast) both had me over 20.7K vertical. I rode slow Wall, Caples Crest and Sunrise chairs 3x each. Most other rides were on Cornice with a couple laps extending to Timber Creek (Kirkwood's only two high-speed lifts). Snow was very good winter and often very packed powder with some windsift and a little extra firm. The 'new' skis I bought on Tues. worked great on the groomers and on little bumps I found in a few spots and also in the steep chutes I skied and were a blast to crank high-G carving turns.

On Sunrise I found I nice line with decent small bumps that led into a tight gully that was good enough to repeat.
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After my third time up I exited via Thunder Saddle and Two Man Chute. I jumped in on the same entrance in the picture of my son's friend and really had to throw myself out there to get past the big bump underneath the cornice. In Two Man, which will be very narrow and steep until it fills in more, there were two boarders very slowly butt-sliding it. My last two runs on Cornice were bumps on edge of Janek then into steep chute to left of cliffs and then Olympic. Both runs get little sun and had some great snow with big bumps. Not sure when I'll get back as storms seems to be under-performing although still have a problem with hot water pressure relief at cabin that most likely requires soldering copper pipes, something I've never done before.
 
From the snow and open terrain stats, there seems to be a huge disparity between Heavenly and Kirkwood in this early season. This is not unusual under low tide conditions and confirmed by your report.
 
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