It snowed hard all day Saturday. When I reached the summit about 10AM the Backside lift wasn't open yet so I skied one run on Comstock. The front side of Northstar is nearly all of low intermediate pitch, so after the first 500 vertical or so you had to ski in someone's tracks or you would grind to a halt. Whoever put the first track down any of these runs paid a steep (or not-so-steep
) price.
Next time up the 1,800 vertical Backside chair was open so I skied 7 runs there before lunch. There was at least 2 feet new plus more being added each run. I had last skied Northstar in 1984 and remembered the then-new Backside as good advanced intermediate cruising. With all of this new snow it was barely adequate pitch for powder. You had to stay in the fall line and often not make turns at all. Fortunately I only once ended up in a too flat spot and had to slog about 100 feet to a skier packed trail. The cut runs were tracked out in an hour or so, but nearly all the trees on the Backside have decent spacing so I continued to enjoy fresh tracks
.
We were very lucky to be at Northstar, which is Tahoe's most sheltered area and almost never has to close lifts. Other areas were severely restricted this weekend, and the road to Mt. Rose, where I had planned to ski Sunday, was closed for avalanche control. The Backside terrain faces NW and after lunch the winds were strong enough to shut its chair down.
At lunch with the http://nasja.org people I decided to join a small group with instructor Brad and marketing director Nicole Clay to ski the Lookout chair in the afternoon. Lookout is a recent addition to Northstar and is about 1,300 vertical and considerably steeper than the rest of the mountain. By afternoon you had to go into tight or out-of-the-way trees to get any fresh tracks. We skied a couple of the cut runs in chowder, with Brad giving us some tips on carving through it. I finished the day with 22,400 vertical, 15K of it in powder.
On Sunday I had to face the reality of driving to L.A., which would not have even been possible Saturday. In the early morning the snow stopped, so I spent 7:45 - 9:00AM shoveling my car out of the 4+ feet of snow that had fallen since Friday night, once I had determined that I-80 over Donner Summit had reopened. Hwy 395 which I had driven Wednesday remained closed.
Despite an aching back from shoveling snow, I couldn't resist checking out the Lookout chair in the morning
. The first couple of runs were fresh tracks right down the middle of the steeper cut runs. After a few more runs in the trees I was beat, and I decided to leave at 1PM. I was very lucky here too, because the traffic over Donner Pass moved smoothly as most people must have either left early or skied later. Despite driving through heavy SoCal rain I was home at 9PM.
Last season I did not even have my first ski day until January 10. This year, not only have I had 12 already, I've had to use the Chubbs for 6 of them. I've skied 55K of powder so far, about the same as all last season.
