New Year Ski Adventure

This was the ski trip that almost didn’t happen… We’d been planning to visit the Hansens in Bend since Tony dropped by on a visit to Healdsburg back in November and invited us up for a ski. Our plan was to spend a few days skiing in Tahoe before driving north to Oregon for New Year in Bend with Tony and the family. But a few days before we were due to disembark, I checked my trusty Weather Underground app, entered “Squaw Valley” (like I’ve done for more than 10 years…) and was horrified to see three days of 60°F/16°C temps with an inch of rain each day at the ski resort. We canceled our Tahoe bookings, called the Hansens in Bend to tell them we weren’t coming and rebooked everything to take us to Utah instead. A day later, after much chagrin, I twigged that last season the politically correct folk at what was Squaw Valley changed the name to Palisades Tahoe, and as a result my trusty app now showed me the weather for an unincorporated community east of Fresno called Squaw Valley instead of the ski resort. Go figure. So we canceled Utah, rebooked Tahoe and told the Hansens we would in fact be hoping to share New Year with them!

Out first couple of days skiing Alpine were complete opposite ends of the spectrum: day one was spring skiing conditions in mid-December, while on day two a warm storm came in that had rain pouring at the resort base. Day two was some of the wettest conditions I can remember since I was a kid in Australia skiing in a garbage bag with rubber kitchen gloves. The temps cooled down a little by early afternoon and the resort opened some of the more advanced lifts, we were some of the few skiers on the mountain and enjoyed top of bottom fresh tracks on Roundhouse for the few runs before we were soaked to the core. Even Gore-Tex eventually succumbs to hours in the rain. Wet, but a lot of fun.

For our last day in Tahoe we all enjoyed finally being back on the slopes with the Munselle family, our stalwart ski companions since the four of our kids were in kindergarten. The conditions at Olympic Valley were exceptional, with more than a foot of fresh snow on the upper mountain and cloudless skies. The only problem was Palisades ops: the gondola was on mechanical hold until after lunchtime, Squaw One didn’t open until mid-morning and the tram had a wait of almost an hour. You’d think a corporate behemoth like Alterra would put some extra staff on for the busiest week of the year. The Christmas week crowds and operations troubles meant our first three runs took more than three hours. Yes, I was ready to explode. It was the worst resort crowds I’d ever experienced by a country mile. We eventually bit the bullet and lined up for Squaw One (photos of the crowds below), which was without a doubt worth the wait when we finally made it to the upper mountain. The eight of us lapped Siberia Express all afternoon, enjoying as much of the dry powder as we could get. Lance, Lisa, Max and I were one of the last chairs up Big Blue for the day. Solid. So great to see the kids all back together feeding off each other’s stoke.

It was a roughly six hour drive from Reno to Bend, desolate high desert roads with some periods of more than half an hour without seeing another vehicle on the road. Of the roughly 410 miles/660 kilometers it was snowing for close to 250 miles/400 kilometers, fortunately it was dry snow and it was cold enough that the roads didn’t ice up. Some big country out there in Modoc County, with vistas that seemed to go on forever and the occasional wild horse visible from the road. The 4Runner definitely proved itself on the stretch.

Bachelor was just awesome. A great mountain for kids with excellent tree skiing off all the chairs, and we really lucked out on conditions with fresh powder on two of our three days skiing. Tony was a man after my heart getting us to the mountain each powder day shortly after 8AM, on the second powder day we were actually on an early-opened lift at 8:20AM! The snow was a little heavier than usual for Bachelor but still a ton of fun, all of us had such a blast. And Bachelor operations were such a breath of fresh air compared to the bottom-line focused resorts we’re used to in Northern California: lifts that opened early, fantastic crowd management, friendly lift attendants and just a generally relaxed and down-to-earth vibe to the whole mountain.

It was also great to spend some QT with the Hansen family: Tony and I shared an office in Healdsburg for almost 10 years before he and the family moved to Maui and then Bend. In all that time we realized we never actually spent time with the two families together (maybe Tony and I saw enough of each other every day, all day in the office!). The Hansens were so welcoming, opening up their beautiful house in Bend to us for our time in town and providing some wonderful company for the year to tick over into 2023. Tony and Mary-Elizabeth’s daughters were a delight, our “little” kids loved hanging out with some teenage kids, and I think I made a new best friend in Jambo (the family dog). Also great to rendezvous with the Millers, another Healdsburg family in Bend for the New Year celebration on their way back to Cali from a ski adventure in Idaho. A great way to bring in the new year, we’ll definitely be back to Bachelor, I have a feeling!