Tahoe
10 hour drive up to Tahoe... that wasn't so bad, til the last what, 2 or 3 hours were on chains. Snow level was down to 3500', then later that night it was 1500'.
Off to Mt. Rose on Saturday morning, after a rather leisurely wakeup and departure across snow-covered roads. It was a surprisingly light weekend-- crowds weren't bad at all. The high elevation of Mt. Rose meant excellent snow, and it seems like just about everyone had a good time. Didn't quite hit all the runs on the left side of the trail map that we wanted to, mostly because visibility degraded at mid-slope in the afternoon down to almost nothing. We decided discretion was the smarter move and stayed conservative pretty much the whole weekend, which turned out to be a good idea. We covered the right side pretty throughly, which felt good!
The one drawback to Mt. Rose compared to where we were staying (Carnelian Bay) is that it was pretty far. Far enough that one of the cars had a cable chain fail on the way back, after they had cleared the roads for the afternoon. That kept things interesting. Doh.
Dinner brought on the trademark of the trip-- too much food. Justin made jerk chicken and pasta, and we had waaaaay too much food. Very tasty. The other trip highlight also emerged: Bill starting the fireplace. Without matches. Umm. Yeah... fun times!
We split up for Sunday: Bill, Annie, Ray, Molly, and I headed to Squaw Valley USA, while Sophia, Justin, Matt, Krishna, and Carley went to Northstar. After breakfast of banana pancakes and chicken apple sausage (sooo tasty!) Squaw should have been a 20 minute drive away, but traffic turned it into a 90 minute drive with all the snow on the road. Ouch. Plus, coming over a little hill, someone in a white Toyota Camry was going waaaay too fast in the opposite lane, lost control, and pirouetted into our lane. Ray and I had way too close a call there as Ray accelerated out of the way, leaving me a gap to scoot forward and emerge unscathed by a narorw margin. Eeeeek.
Squaw itself is beautiful. I picked up an intermediate lesson in the morning, which was excellent, then joined everyone else after lunch and ran around most of the intermediate terrain near High Camp. It's hard to describe specifics- it was just damned nice to be there, even as it cooled off and got cold. There's so much to explore at Squaw, I think we'd need a full three days there... the terrain is so varied and so much fun! Weather conditions were a little better than the previous day, too-- no complete whiteouts, so we could actually see where we were going!
More fun with fire and dinner the next night-- Carley's tuna casserole was very tasty-- then most of us played Mafia afterwards. (interesting games you learn with the Tsai family...) Breakfast the next morning was porridge with all the trimmings, again, delicious!.
The drive back wasn't bad-- it did not snow, so the roads were clear. Traffic on 80W through Roseville sucked, but the rest was pretty smooth.
Good things: everyone had fun, tons of yummy food, great skiing/boarding when the weather was clear, no one froze, the driving was pretty smooth despite the slowness.
Bad things: hot water heater was really slow, maintaining even heat in the condo was difficult, no one had matches for the fireplace, too much food (how is that bad tho?), had a cable chain failure-- thankfully we were back in town when that happened.
Ugly things: Sophia's snowboard got stolen at Mt. Rose. =(