One Last Storm

The resorts up here had really been hurting following that insane high pressure system that rolled over Northern California a couple of weeks back… Max and I have watched Sugar Bowl progressively close terrain from east to west as the warm weather parked itself on top of the resort: I think Judah spun its last day on March 21, and Jerome had its last hurrah a week-or-so later. The grooming staff did an incredible job harvesting snow to keep the lower elevation access trails open last week, although up high on Dis and Lincoln there was still plenty of coverage.

We’d been watching the long range forecast for a while, keeping an eye on a storm that kept drifting on and off the schedule, slated to begin on March 30. Sometimes we’d look and it’d be r@!n, other times there’d be three feet of snow on deck… Stressful! The skies started to darken and wind picked up on Monday night, followed by an initial onslaught of non-frozen precipitation as we were going to bed. Tuesday marked the second day of the season when I could have skied but did not (the other being February 24), I had no desire to hit the slopes and be soaked to the core after my first run. But yesterday we woke up to a few inches of fresh, high moisture content snow on the deck… One. Last. Storm.

In all their wisdom, the pencil pushers at Sugar Bowl decided not to open the resort during the storm, publicly labeling their cost-cutting decision as a “snow conservation measure” (how you conserve snow by keeping skiers off it when there’s a foot of fresh on the ground beats me…). The boys were not excited about a third full day in the classroom for the week yesterday, they should have been skiing had Sugar Bowl decided to open. I headed down the mountain to ski Squaw for the day, ultimately having to wait two hours as the ops crews cleared all the rime ice off the upper mountain chairs and eventually uploading on the funitel to get up high. The lower mountain was nothing but dirt. It was r@!ning at the base but the upper mountain was a winter wonderland: snow covering the trees, low vis, howling wind and 12+ inches of fresh covering the slopes… It was exceedingly wet and heavy, but it was a lot of fun. The moisture content of the snow caught a lot of people off guard, I saw more rag doll crashes from the chair in two hours than I have in a single day for a long time. Even though there had been more than a foot fall overnight, it was so dense it was like skiing on soft butter rather than fresh pow. The wind systematically closed down the mountain one chair at a time, but it was great to get in a few laps before everything shut shortly after 1PM.

This morning we woke up blue sky poking through the clouds and quickly checked the Sugar Bowl report: 27 inches/70 centimeters of snow since the storm started on Monday night. Go time! With rime ice covering all the chairs and winds gusting at 135MPH/215KPH last night we knew it was going to be a late opening, but we high-tailed it over to the resort for breakfast nonetheless, waiting for the signal from patrol that it was time to hit the steeps.

This storm was the first fresh snow to hit Sugar Bowl since the morning of February 20. A long time between drinks… Unsurprisingly, every man and his dog from the Truckee area was at the resort with a hankering for pow, which made for some long-ish lift lines (by Sugar Bowl standards) as patrol opened the mountain piecemeal. It was by no means blower – freezing level was just below the base of the resort for most of the storm, so lots of moisture in the snow – but it was great to get some fresh turns and so picturesque under the blue skies with snow covering everything in sight. The snow was so grabby I actually took two of my three falls of the season today, the last one on Silver Belt a full somersault over the handlebars and back onto my feet without missing a beat (my neck is going to be sore tomorrow from that one…).

I scored a few untracked laps down Market Street and Disney Nose to start the day, then hooked up with Wild Man, Alex, Coach Erin and Megan (Alex’s Mum) for some hooting and hollering down the chutes of Sugar Bowl and Nancy’s before the boys had to go to school for the afternoon. Lincoln opened up just as I was about to head in, so Megan and I headed up for a few more down the untracked steeps of Silver Belt before calling it a day. Nothing better than a bit of bluebird pow to wind things up before the upcoming end of the season… By the time I left the mountain spring temps were already back and I was cooking in the clothes I’d donned earlier this morning when it was still blizzarding. Back to 49°F/9°C tomorrow!