Powder Haus Christmas

We spent Christmas local this year after heading Down Under for Santa’s visit last year. Lilia and Max requested a white Christmas, with with the winery closed for the break Lisa and I were happy to oblige their request with a couple of weeks on the slopes at Powder Haus. The start of the 2024/2025 ski season was exceptiona: powder skiing pre-Thanksgiving and multiple storms working their way across the Sierras during early December. We spent the first few days at Powder Haus readying things for Santa, chopping down a fir from the yard to serve as a Charlie Brown Christmas tree and making sure Santa had plenty of Christmas cookies to snack on when he dropped in. It was mostly groomers for the first couple of days as we got out ski legs under us, some beautiful views from up top over the eastern Sierras and great coverage for such early season skiing.

Christmas Eve delivered a cold storm to the Sierras, with more than a foot of fresh powder dropping throughout the day. It was awesome. Sugar Bowl was pretty much empty and we had consistent top-to-bottom runs of untracked powder in the trees off Crow’s. Wild Man was in heaven, couldn’t ask for a better Christmas gift from the weather gods!

Santa managed to find us for our first Christmas at Powder Haus, and we kept up the tradition of making Christmas bagels with smoked salmon and capers for breakfast on Christmas Day. Skiing on Christmas Day itself was one of the best December powder days I think I’ve ever had: blue skies and more than a foot of cold smoke covering the resort. It was tracked out quickly, but the weather stayed cold and snow light throughout the day. Ski patrol opened the chutes off Silver Belt for the first time this season, and Max kept me feeling young by asking to ski them again and again. Good times… We enjoyed a lovely roast dinner on Christmas post-ski and enjoyed playing our annual new board game – this year it was Catan – after dinner to round out Christmas 2024.

Kevin, Sophia and Addi Bakker joined us at Powder Haus for a few days post-Christmas. Was great to host them at the cabin, although the exceptional Christmas conditions turned against us for their stay: temps rose and instead of Christmas Eve powder we had a couple of days of freezing rain and even full blown rain one morning. Really horrible conditions, to be honest, it reminded me of skiing in garbage bags with dishwashing gloves as a kid in Australia… But we made the most of it, dodging the showers in the lodge so we’d stay dry and managed some fun tree skiing the day after Christmas when the weather permitted. Little Addi Bakker had her dad’s get-up-and-go attitude on the slopes, careening down the runs at warp speed and giving the adults lots of smiles as she asked for more trees and steeper runs again and again. The kiddos grow so quickly: Lisa and I remember Sophia when she was a quiet little elementary schooler and now she’s driving a car! I hope we can get Kevin and the girls back up here when the conditions are a little more optimal…

We had one more day of mixed precipitation after the Bakkers left us, Max and I braved the wet and scored some great snow on the upper mountain (which was completely empty) in the chutes under Lincoln. Wild Man is becoming more and more fun to ski with every time we go out: constantly seeking steeper pitches, deeper untracked stashes and bigger rocks to boost off on the way down. He actually had me a little worried careening down the chutes in Hari-Kari Gully (last shot below), but I had to tell myself the powder was deep (= soft) and I would have done the same thing had I been able to ski at his level when I was 11.

The skies cleared on December 30 after a solid dump of fresh snow the night before and we had some brilliant blue skies for skiing during the days around New Year. The snow up high stayed nice and light, everyone enjoying hot laps on the groomers coupled with adventures into the trees and chutes under Lincoln. Other than a huge dollop of chairlift grease smearing all over Max and Lisa’s outerwear one day, it was a great way to bid goodbye to 2024 and welcome 2025.

The neighborhood around Powder Haus is a fun place: there’s scores of snowmobiles buzzing through the forest when the weather’s clear, side-by-sides being piloted by teenagers all over the place, even a couple of old school snow cats that appear on occasion. One of the longtime residents has a license for commercial fireworks and put on an amazing spectacle for us all on New Year’s Eve, so fun to walk through the woods in the snow to see the skies lit up for 15 minutes. A very memorable way to remember our first changing of the calendar years at the cabin.

We were treated to one last storm as we wound up our time in the mountains, playing a heated game of Catan in the AM on January 3 while we watched a supercell roll across Northern California. It was one of those eerie mornings when everything’s still before weather armageddon… The snow started to fall around 11AM, we had an early lunch and then headed to the resort in time for the skies to open and the accumulation rate start to pick up. By the time we were on the chairs we were treated to cold, fluffy flakes falling out of the fog at an incredible pace, I think the accumulation rate must have been close to four or five inches an hour in the middle of the storm. It was awesome. Super fun to see the kids beyond stoked on the fresh powder, it was one of those days where you could ski down and come back a couple of runs later to have your tracks completely filled in. I haven’t skied until lift close for a very long time, but on January 3 we were one of the last chairs up the mountain. One to remember, for sure…

We finished up the Christmas/New Year break with fresh powder and blue skies on our last day, racing to the resort and onto the lifts by 8:40AM to grab some much-sought-after fresh lines before it was all tracked out. Some great snow from the storm the day before, although the Christmas/New Year crowds – which is a rarity at Sugar Bowl – clogged the resort by mid-morning. Paris and Alice were nice enough to let me join them in the backcountry for a couple of hours of incredible fresh lines before we had to call it a day and bid the Sierras goodbye. Such a fun way to spend the break, we all left feeling very fortunate with such good snow (except for some rain in the middle of our stay) and good friends to welcome 2025.