South Lake Tahoe, CA and NV February 9-12, 2026

[tseeb]

Kirkwood, CA February 9, 2026
After watching most of the Super Bowl in Santa Clara, CA (from my wife's son's house Levi's Stadium where I worked for a few years in retirement - the flyover),

I left home after 7 on Monday and after a few stops got on lift at Kirkwood at 11:30. I took a couple of warmup laps on high-speed low-intermediate Timber Creek before moving to the Reut where I skied Wagon Trail. Snow stayed firm most of the day as it was cold, in the 30s, and windy. I was on my rock skis which I dropped for a tune-up when I got to So. Tahoe as edges were not holding very well and bases had some damage from four December days at Mammoth. Coverage was generally good, but there were more small rocks on top of the snow and thin areas than 2+ weeks ago. I moved to the Backside and took a lap on groomer between Elevator Shaft and Happiness Is. I returned to front-side on N-facing and mostly shaded Thunder Saddle where ungroomed snow was very good.

Then I did a lot of fast laps on high-speed advanced Cornice chair, alternating between Zachary's and Sentinel Bowl. I went into Monte Wolfe to re-fill my water and drink some. After going up the Reut chair, I skied Short Spoke/the Race Course and barely held my edge skiing fast of edge by trees to left in these photos.

Twice I went into Olympic. Top of lift and Olympic are at left and top of Sentinel Bowl to right of center. The Sentinel is the rock at far right.

The first time I turned off early and took alternate to chute I like that had good snow. The second time I skied more of Olympic bumps

before dropping into chute that patroller told me is Shot 11. I quit about 3:30 with almost 23K. Kirkwood is predicted to get 2" on Tues and 10" on Wed.

 

[tseeb]

Heavenly, CA and NV February 10, 2026
We could have both skied for free at Sierra-at-Tahoe but @Tony Crocker wanted the higher altitude of Heavenly so we drove the 1 mile to CA base. We parked closed to ticket office and bottom of Gunbarrel chair that we loaded not much after 9. He bought a half-price ($106 since he had a snow.com card to load it onto) from my pass. It sounded like walk-up price for the 9 days starting this Saturday will be around $300.

We went up to and skied 4 laps on the highest CA level, all Sky chair except for one Canyon chair. They had made snow along Ridge Run which was in good shape, but Ridge Bowl looked very firm/shiny, so we avoided it. High Five had some thin areas. I started down Double Down toward bottom of Canyon chair but snow was too thin and firm so I cut over and followed Tony on road that avoided it. Canyonland was good but near bottom snow was thin enough that you wanted to stay on shaded edge.

We moved to NV and found some good snow in Milky Way Bowl. Higher road after going under Galaxy to Dipper chair was not something to repeat as it was thin then had area mostly missing snow. Big Dipper run was probably the best we skied all day. Once we dropped off towards the chair skiing a steep, smooth drop I'd spotted from the chair. We skied Nevada Trail to getting thin Stagecoach run to Stagecoach chair then went up it and skied still good Upper North Bowl and rode then skied Olympic to Lower Nevada Trail which I thought would be better but had thin areas. We rode North Bowl and Dipper and skied CA Trail to busy Tamarack Lodge for lunch.

It started snowing a little, then sun came out. We rode Tamarack and skied Orion to Jacks which was too firm and did a lap on Comet before riding Dipper and skiing CA Trail back to Sky Chair. We skied Ridge to Canyonland cutting over to High Five. It was good enough that we rode Canyon and skied Ridge to Upper Mombo which had good snow on and getting to SW-facing part. We rode Groove and Tony downloaded Gunbarrel as he didn't want any ski damage so early in his long trip. I avoided thin area at top of Advanced Roundabout by entering it under rope from Groove and went high to avoid another thin area. Coverage and snow the rest of the way down was good.

Tony took some pictures that he'll have to load when he has Internet which we don't at cabin except by hot-spotting phone. I started SkiTracks riding Gunbarrel and it may have shutdown early as it only shows a straightline (next to 20 in 2nd screen print) coming down Roundabout with a low elevation of 7,295 while CA base is 6,565 so I'm adding 730' and counting 21.9K. After me getting some bootwork done, we were almost too late getting to 4-5 very busy sushi Happy Hour that has large selection rolls for $12 each as we were seated after 4:50, but it turned out well. Almost half of the Spider Roll had been eaten when photo was taken at 5:16. Some snow fell overnight and chain control is on I-80 and CA-88, but surprisingly not on US-50 so we may be going to Kirkwood today where 11" was predicted (and 7" new reported 20 min ago).

Edit to add that Sierra posted 8" new at 556 AM and it's about half the drive, free for both of us and may include a $20 Ikon lodge credit (payable in March and only for skiing in US) so we may be heading there instead.

 

[Tony Crocker]

I knew Tuesday would be strictly groomers, and one would think given Heavenly's reputation in the ski world that Vail would do its best there. I think overall they did, as groomers above 9,000 feet were intensely reconditioned to packed powder. The catch is that you need a fairly deep base to do that, and once you get lower, the occasional tree roots sticking up demonstrated that the base is far from I skied on Monday at Mammoth. It was still overall a decent day. Only a few places had the extra slick manmade subsurface.

Unlike the 100% overcast Monday at Mammoth, Tuesday had some sunny breaks. Heavenly is another US area copying the French sign tradition.

There is also evidence that Heavenly is still making snow when it can.

Some locals must be unhappy with Vail.

As I descended about 2:15PM I had great views of South Lake Tahoe

And the Stateline casino area:

From the California base you can see why Gunbarrel is not open.

Gunbarrel does have snow guns on the side of the run. I've always suspected this is the steepest run in the West with snowmaking. But given its low elevation and the usual western issue of water supply, I'd guess its priority for snowmaking is low.

 

[tseeb]

Sierra-at-Tahoe, CA Febuary 11, 2026
Sierra reported 8" new vs. 7 at Kirkwood and 6 at Heavenly. We loaded Grandview chair before 9 and skied Castle but found very hard surface underneath the new snow on nearly all turns, especially on W-facing lower. N-facing Lower Main and Nob Hill were better. Then we found West Bowl area was best, even though it's lower. We started with a run on Bashful and found edges were very good. Then @Tony Crocker r thought snow under chair looked good and visibility had improved so we took at least 4 runs there. Looking up at some of the tracks we left between Clipper and Dogwood.

Looking down from same place.

Next three are Tony Crocker making some turns between the many stumps and some rocks in the West Bowl.

Visibility came and went. It started snowing again before noon and kept up on and off until we left before 230 after 18 lifts and 21.7K. Number of skiers in the powder was low so there was room for tracks until the end. View of Tahoe at 545 from near hot tub we warmed up in after skiing.

 

[Tony Crocker]

We were on second chair so that Castle run we could ski anywhere, but it was just a bit too steep for the amount of new snow with a frozen granular subsurface. I thought it might be a true low angle powder day, of which our one backside run was the best example. But those West Bowl runs cutting diagonally under the lifts were deeper and we rarely hit the subsurface on the lower 2/3 or so of those runs. Tseeb on a couple of them:

What really made this day was the lack of crowds. Every run we skied before lunch was fresh tracks aside from runouts to the lifts. I estimate 14K of powder. In terms of skier density and very gradual tracking out of snow it reminded me of Pajarito in March 2019. The moderate proportion of skiing with the icy subsurface and the Sierra Cement snow density made this day more strenuous than that one. But we both were on dedicated powder skis which handle the Sierra Cement quite well making untracked turns. There were surely more people here than at Pajarito. But the Caldor Fire transformed West Bowl into open rather than treed terrain. The open terrain allows more room for first tracks.

 

[tseeb]

Adding a couple of photos of Tony Crocker taken before 945. This was our first or second time going under slow but efficient Nob Hill chair that we rode a couple of times skiing from steeper Lower Main towards not running Rock Garden chair.

 

[EMSC]

given its low elevation and the usual western issue of water supply, I'd guess its priority for snowmaking is low.

It used to be higher on the snowmaking priority list when Heavenly used to have the pro mogul tour come to town (and broadcast on television) each year. No idea when that stopped being a thing for them. Sure looks very sad in its current state of coverage though.

 

[snowtrekker]

But given its low elevation and the usual western issue of water supply, I'd guess its priority for snowmaking is low.

Big bear is often described as having a limitless source of water from the lake, so it seems surprising that the same would not be true at Heavenly with near direct access to Tahoe.

 

[tseeb]

Heavenly, CA and NV February 12, 2026
One day before the 49-month anniversary of track-mounted binding problem that caused my wife’s very serious head injury, I had something similar happen with Tyrolia demo bindings on DPS skis I'd bought from SkiTalk. I loaded Gunbarrel chair early & was almost at top of it before 9.

I rode Sky chair 4x skiing Ridge into Ridge Bowl, High Five into Lower Double Down (much improved since Tuesday) and Canyonland (still thin at end of Double Down) before moving to NV. Surface everywhere was much improved by 6” Heavenly reported on Wed + 1” on Thurs. Sky@910

Since I would have gotten to gates before 10 AM opening of Mott Canyon chair I did the 10+ min at ~10K hike to saddle above Milky Way Bowl.

Looking West (toward Lake and Mt Tallac) from hike

to get some untracked high-elevation powder turns. On hike there were only a couple of tracks ahead of me and the thin snow made it difficult to get over rocks in a couple places. I stopped to take a couple of pictures when visibility was good, but clouds moved in before I skied.

Not much of a problem for skiing, but not good for photos. My tracks above and looking down from same place.

I’m not going to give details on the middle of my morning but will post a few photos.

I was thirsty and had left my water in my car, so I went into East Peak Lodge and drank about a quart then rode Comet and skied Aries Wood.

I rode Dipper and skied N-side of Milky Way Bowl then skied Bills in Mott Canyon for the first time this season.
Looking up much steeper than it looks Bills.

Snow was very good but I had hit a few rocks on Bills and Aries Woods and other places so after riding Dipper again and skiing CA Trail I stopped in Maggie’s Canyon and checked left ski. I did see some damage next to edge. Then I continued skiing powder to Maggies run and rode Groove chair to get to Advanced Roundabout. I bypassed the gate as entry was still thin and entered by going under rope from Groove terrain park as I did on Tuesday. Coverage had improved getting to main Roundabout, partially because I stayed very high above corner that has been thin. I continued down Roundabout without problem then cut the last hairpin corner and skied some of steep West Bowl that I’d done a couple of times in January but had skipped on Tuesday.

I fell a few times as I was having trouble controlling left ski. It was usually coming off when I fell but it was not until I rejoined the very firm trail at bottom of steep face and fell again hitting my nose hard enough that I expected bleeding that did not come when I realized binding heel had slid back. I thought it was a screw-track and did not have a tool to adjust it so I carefully snowplowed down rest of Roundabout keeping pressure on so ski stayed on. That worked well until I was about 50’ above where I tried to go on the shorter side of World Cup chair and I could not keep ski on, so I removed the other ski and walked more than 100’ feet or so to the parking lot then another 100’ to my car.

I'd left my rock skis on Monday for a tune-up to get better edge hold next time I use them at Pyramid Peak shop where Geoff always takes great care of me. I went there showed him the problem. He showed me that a lever releases the binding for moving it along track but had never seen problem I had where the lever would not hold binding in place after boot was inserted. He had me take a video of him demonstrating the problem which he sent to binding rep. While finishing tuning my skis he heard back from rep who was not interested in problem on binding more than two years old. Geoff also commented there was a lot of wear on upper rear edges of binding but did not think that would cause problem I experienced. He'd stopped using Tyrolia demo bindings on his rental skis as many customers (he said mostly it happened to women) would carry skis by binding heels and release them and the heels would fall off.

I was going to take my DPS skis to BC next week as they are softer tha othern upper 90-width skis I have but they now need new bindings installed and some basework that I will have Geoff do on my next Tahoe trip. I was planning to quit skiing earlier, finish packing and cleaning and close cabin, then ski Kirkwood for a couple of hours on my way home but after my slow finish to Roundabout and long stop at ski shop I was way too late. I had less than 13K, my season low so far but I'm uninjured and problem I experienced could have happened in much worse place.

 

[EMSC]

Bindings are never a problem, until they are. Glad you were able to ID the issue on-hill before a hard crash.

My son had issues with brand new Look Pivot bindings earlier this year. Heal piece was basically defective and had to be replaced. Not good for a 2 month old binding that is explicitly sold as being ideal for very heavy use cases (eg jumping and railing in the park, etc...). My son wasn't really even using it in those use cases. Mostly used as a Jr/assistant coach of little 7-8 year olds doing basic drills and stuff.

I was going to take my DPS skis to BC next week as they are softer tha othern upper 90-width skis I have but they now need new bindings installed and some basework

Why not just rent from Mustang when up there? They have a good selection of ideal skis for cat skiing at very reasonable rental prices. Using your non-DPS skis would see to be OK for if/when you add in a few ski resort days on the side.

 

[tseeb]

I’m driving to Mustang so I can bring multiple pairs on trip. High 90-width would not be appropriate for Mustang.

But I’m thinking that instead of 116x188 Rossi Super 7s that have a lot of rocker and 11 year-old Salomons with one brake that doesn’t always open that I’ve used on my 6 previous times at Mustang bringing the 125x189 Blizzard Spurs that I could have used my last time when it was very deep but I hadn’t had bindings adjusted or tested then. I’ve only skied them once and it was on a day they were not needed.