North Lake Tahoe, Feb. 12-13, 2026

[Tony Crocker]

I stayed with Bob and Pat in Reno for two nights, skiing Palisades Thursday and Mt. Rose Friday. They also have a home in Big Bear and Liz and I skied with them there first in Jan. 2021 and then here at Mt. Rose in Feb. 2022.

Bob and Pat fit the Jimk profile of retirees, typically skiing 3 hours a day at a brisk pace. Thus I wasn't getting the camera out much then. Bob and Jen are skiing here under the lower part of Siberia.

Jen recently moved to Reno from NYC.

Thursday was heavy overcast with the cloud covering the top of Headwall, Siberia and Granite Chief in the morning. Pat has some vertigo issues so we took 5 laps on Shirley Lake. Total upper mountain snow the past 2 days was 9 inches so all the groomers above Gold Coast had nice packed powder. That included south facing Emigrant. The top quarter of Siberia was pea soup but worth the effort for some soft snow exploration lower down.

They all left at noon. My legs were worked from Wednesday but I had to go back and at least have a look at Granite Chief.

You can't tell from the pic, but there was no grooming so that center bowl was all moguls, some of them scraped down to the prior base. Far skier's right is more north facing and skied better.

While getting there via Big Blue, the cloud layer had lifted just above the top of Siberia.

Similar view to Emigrant:

The ridge to the right of Emigrant lost its snow during the dry month, blocking the way to Funnel, a steep bowl dropping into Shirley Lake.

With the higher cloud line I thought it worth trying Headwall. The run under the lift had some exposed rocks with paths between them scraped. There were quite a few people in Slot, so I chose to ski there. The entry was over steep moguls but snow as excellent once the run spread out. There was even an untracked section below me here.

Looking back up:

That run was still exhausting so I was done at 1:30 with 15,400 vertical.

 

[Tony Crocker]

On Friday at Mt. Rose we were also joined by Paul from San Jose who has a place in Incline Village. As forecast Friday was sunny except for this odd cloud that covered the bottom quarter of the Slide Mt. side at noon.

This was a fast morning of groomers all in excellent condition, starting with Bonanza and Bruce's on the Slide side. On the front side we skied Lone Tree, Kit Carson, Ramsey's, Greg's Gamble and Waterfall. On such a nice day leading into the holiday weekend it was quite busy. Both sides have high speed six packs to keep the liens short. There are lots or runs to spread people out but we noticed high skier density at lift unloading areas.

We had a short break at 11AM to beat the likely lunch crowd. I negotiated a half hour extension to Bob's usual noon departure so I could check out one of the Chutes. I showed some discretion and chose nominally single back Beehive.

It is still impressively steep, as evidenced by my frequent suck wind breaks. I was surprised to see big moguls as Mt. Rose's website has shown the Chutes closed since the end of January. That was incorrect as Bob and Pat said they were open last week before the new snow. That makes sense because despite the moguls there was zero icy subsurface with the steep and sheltered north exposure.

View east from near the bottom of Beehive:

I was done at 12:30. I chose to drive up with Bob and Pat and observe their schedule because:
1) I was getting tired on my fifth day.
2) I needed to make the arrangements for the next week of the road trip.
I had left messages with Chatter Creek, had some phone tag in the morning but reached them during that 11AM lunch break. This afternoon I had fill out online forms to finalize Chatter Creek and make reservations for the next 3 nights before I go there.

 

[Tony Crocker]

I e-mailed Mt. Rose about The Chutes. Policy is that website shows them closed except during hours they are actually open. This means if you check in the evening or early morning before lifts open, they will show being closed. This misled me on my Jan. 31 snow report which I will correct.