Powder Week

The forecast had consistently been calling for an intense storm to hit us on President’s Day long weekend. Originally it was slated to start on Friday night right after the girls arrived from Sonoma. Then it pushed back to Saturday… Then Sunday… The forecast from Sunday on Open Snow is snapped to the right. Yep, that’s almost nine feet of snow in the span of two weeks. The last big dump we received up here on Donner Summit was in early January so when we went to bed on Sunday night with starry skies and no wind Max didn’t believe what was due to hit overnight. Monday morning I was making my tea and heard him coming down the stairs, followed by a whispered, “Holy shit!” as he looked out the window. Roughly eight inches of fresh snow coated the deck and banister, with big Sierra flakes continuing to cascade out of the sky. Go time.

President’s Day was one of the few days of the season when Max didn’t have school or training, so it was great for him to be able to ski with the family as well as the Cullertons. Finn is a grade below Max at Sugar Bowl Academy but the two of them share a lot of classrooms given the small size of the school. They’ve become tight buddies over the past couple of months. Finn snowboards and Max is on the freeride squad so the two of them never get to train together, Monday was a great opportunity for them to hit the steeps on their day off. Tons of fun having a squad of eight hitting the pow and watching the five kids feed off each other, hitting every drop and chute they could find and frothing with excitement at the end of each run. The pow wasn’t bottomless but it made for excellent conditions, and we were all thanking ski patrol for getting the steeps open shortly after the chairs started spinning.

The girls were originally slated to head home on Tuesday, but the snow continued to pummel the mountains on Monday afternoon and in hindsight made the right call to head back down the mountains to Lilia’s sheep after dinner on Monday night: the freeway closed early Tuesday morning and stayed closed until Wednesday night. Max and I were up early on Tuesday to dig our way to the 4Runner when just as we were ready to head to school we received the alert that school and training was canceled for the day. With all roads up to the summit shut down in the blizzard there was no way for staff and coaches to get to the resort. We watched the resort status online from Powder Haus as mountain ops tried to get the things open, eventually making a beeline for the 4Runner when they started opening chairlifts shortly after 9AM.

The resort was almost empty except for the handful of diehards who live up on the summit and some residents of village, but it was well worth the white-knuckle drive up Donner Pass Road once we arrived: bottomless pow everywhere we looked. Even thought the bulk of the resort was open most of it was unskiable, it was just too deep, especially for someone as light as Max. I was even struggling to keep my momentum on anything but the steepest of pitches and found myself wishing I had a set of Paris’ Blizzard Spurs underfoot with their almost snowboard-like 127 millimeter waist. I stuck close to Wild Man, it was up to his waist in sections and I was a little wary of him disappearing down a tree well. We managed to get some great turns in before the resort fully shut down around noon, likely influenced by the news of a tragic backcountry avalanche a few miles away below Castle Peak.

The weather was intense on the way back to Powder Haus, I actually had to get the 4Runner pulled off some compacted snow in the Sugar Bowl parking lot when I accidentally rolled off the plowed path while traveling at a crawl (ironically a few seconds after I asked Max to help me see in the white out conditions!). May good karma come to the old gent who rolled by in a Jeep with a snatch strap who pulled us a few feet backwards onto the plowed asphalt. The crawl home across the top of Donner Summit wasn’t too bad given we were only traveling at 10-15MPH, but the two of us definitely breathed a little easier when we rolled into Powder Haus to finish the day.

It was back to training/school for Wild Man on day three and we were actually due to get a visit from the Taylors but there was no way the roads were going to open amidst the onslaught. I was able to hook up with Paris, Nick, Mike and Matt for an incredible day of bottomless storm skiing. The snow continued to pummel the mountains and the conditions kept most people away from the resort, making for a day of free refills and knee-deep cold smoke from top to bottom. I think the maximum temperature up there on day three was 19°F/-7°C, and I was actually pretty cold: I had to don some glove liners and the soles of my feet were absolutely freezing, but no way I was going inside! The snow quality was phenomenal, like skiing a storm of low moisture fluff in the Wasatch or Rockies, so much fun… Paris, Nick and I happened to be skiing past the base of Lincoln chairlift mid-morning when we realized it had just opened and jumped on for a top-to-bottom run of completely untracked knee- to waist-deep powder. It was one of those days where you could confidently huck of pretty much anything within the resort boundaries without having to worry what the landing was going to be like. Definitely one for the ages, not many pics from day three, there was too much bombing to do!

During Max’s school session on Wednesday the kids started to realize that some of their classmates who were absent were children of the victims of Tuesday’s tragic avalanche. Max was pretty somber when I picked him up from school, and I found myself giving him way more hugs than I usually do that afternoon. Just way too close to home… That night he made me promise – with tears in his eyes – that I wouldn’t skin up Castle Peak again. So gut wrenching to think of the kids in his classes whose lives are changed forever.

School and training was canceled again for day four of the storm and I had one of Max’s Academy buddies with us for the day because his parents were not about to brave the conditions. Ops committed to open the mountain so we made the trip up to the resort and waited for an hour-and-a-half in the sub-20°F/-7°C blizzard for Disney to open. We ran into Matt Dixon in the chairlift line when we walked up to Max and Beaux – given their Academy jackets – and asked if either of them knew Max and Sam. One of the kids ended up being Max and I was standing a few feet away! Unfortunately a little before 11AM patrol decided conditions were too dangerous to let skiers on the slopes and canned the resort opening for the day, a real bummer as it would have been another one of the few times I’d have been able to freeski with Max this season. But… Given the tragic avalanche earlier in the week we all understood playing it safe.

We woke up to blue skies and 27 inches/69 centimeters of fresh powder this morning. 10°F/-12°C at Powder Haus. What a storm… The ride to training was a mess, with every man and his dog from San Francisco to Reno making the trip to the mountains for what ended up being 111 inches/9.25 feet/2.8 meters of snow over the span of four days. Incredible. The lift lines were long for Sugar Bowl – although quite mellow in Squaw and Northstar terms – but it was well worth it. For my first run this morning, God blessed me by having patrol drop the rope into Nancy’s Couloir as I was getting off the top of Disney chair for an run of waist deep untracked cold smoke down the 45° slopes with nothing but blue skies across the horizon. Another one from this week that I’ll remember for a long time, felt like flying. The Sugar Bowl Academy kids were doing themselves proud: it was great to watch them backflipping and spinning of every cliff, drop and roll in sight underneath the chairs every time I rode up. Max came home so full of stoke at sticking two 360 spins off the wind lip into the pow at the bottom of Avalanche during the day (hist first rotations in the air since he hyperextended his knee in the park a few weeks back…).

I try to keep Powder Haus from turning into a man cave when the ladies aren’t here, but things went a little sideways this week with the snow… Max mentioned he had been wearing his socks for four days on the way to training this morning and I’m on my last pair of underpants. The storm was great, but a part of me is glad we now have a bit of a break. Time to get back to the necessities – primarily the laundry – and we’re both so tired of shoveling that deck!