Possible restrictions on Rt. 88...

[hardrider]

Some of the fastest snow Ive ever skied in my whole-entire-complete-total-life. Its nuking kids its nuking. honestly its a good thing that its snowing since our base has really been shrinking, we need this storm more than anywhere I would guess.



Sorry.



edit: 5 more inches and k-wood rolls over 400"for the season.

[lph]

glad it was fun, kids.

might try to get out there for a couple hours tomorrow, especially if it is going to be as good as hardrider says (he is RARELY wrong. ) but, chances of that are slim and none.

[Tyrone Shoelaces]

edit: 5 more inches and k-wood rolls over 400"for the season.

wow...they usually don't hit that until March or April. Sick. keeping my fingers crossed for super long spring season!

[Spats]

At this rate we'll be able to hold the Mammoth spring mini in August. Kirkwood will probably close with a 10-foot base.

Just started dumping rain here. Again.

[skier666]

.....I'm getting worried on the base situation too. If it shrinks anymore I may need to bring out the Ghetto Fab G4's. But thank god snow is in the forecast.

[divegirl]

I did it the otherway for Wednesday. I convinced my boss that he should go skiing on Wednesday.....

You're lucky. You work in a smallish not-very-corporate office compared to mine. NO FAIR. My boss did the Lumberg thing today - literally - and said, "We need you to help Mr. X out on a project for a couple days, okay?" as he looked at me with beaty eyes (I think he's been smoking too many cigarettes). He seemed relentless, like it was an important job, as if to say, "I KNOW you'll want to leave to go skiing on Wednesday, and this should keep you here." I think I'm feeling sick. I should have never told anyone I picked up this sport.

[Superstar Punani]

Workin 9 to 5 has got you caught in the past
That no-end job is taking you nowhere fast

Sometimes you just gotta break the law.

We're heading for a(nother) blizzard....

a blizzard of aahhhs

[xboat]

so is basom and crew killing it or what?

[Arty50]

Workin 9 to 5 has got you caught in the past
That no-end job is taking you nowhere fast

Sometimes you just gotta break the law.

We're heading for a(nother) blizzard....

a blizzard of aahhhs

Are you gonna get everyone in the office sick again?

[Bum Z]

Nice thread. If we Utards would learn to post in just one thread, people might stop bitching about how many Alta threads there are.

[runethechamp]

Lots of big negotiations before the shoot... Now it was time to deliver.

[Tyrone Shoelaces]

so is basom and crew killing it or what?

heh...I got a message from basom as they were cruising through Sacto on their way to SFO. He used the phrase "killing it" more than a few times I believe. Also said something about first chair on KT-22 and maybe best day ever or some gibberish like that......

[basom]

just got in on the red eye at 7 am eastern time. rolled directly from the airport to a meeting. just a bit worked right now.

we had an epic trip, and my mind is such a piece of shit right now i'm not going to attempt a TR. if i did i'm sure justice would not be done.

all i can say is that my decision to pull the trigger on this one and roll the dice was the best one i've made in at least five years. everything worked out, everything. (except making it down to SLT and the wood, but after the day we had at squaw on sunday and the hopes of more terrain openings on monday we felt it would be just stupid to drive five hours to a possibly closed road. and of course we were rewarded with Granite chief oh yeah)

good to meet and ski with you for a bit alka. and lane, what more can i say...... you and rob are the meng. we had a seriously good time with you guys.

bill is still there, and the ski pics are on his camera. so those wont be up till wed or thurs, and per usuall it was way too good to be stoping and shooting all over the place, but we got a few.

gonzo killed it..
bill killed it
APK killed it
and my new knee felt strong and true, and i think i know where i'm moving next fall.

[Foggy_Goggles]

Base in your face! Whey to get after it. Whiners will not be tolerated, simply directed to this thread.

[Ubersheist]

I should have never told anyone I picked up this sport.

Ditto. I regret it terribly now. I should've told 'em my hobby was knitting and darning bobby socks.

Our office has the Lumberg mentality, too. As such, if I'm not here tomorrow, there will be hell to pay on Thursday.

[gonzo]

3:30 pm Friday - Arrive at airport 3 hours early. Nervous that flight may not get out. Hopefully all will be well with me and the others.

6:38 pm -Hour 3- - On the plane. "Indefinite delay" to get to San Francisco due to weather. Fuck fuck fuck.

7:00 pm - Drinking at airport bar. Told to check in at 7:30 at gate to check on weather hold. APK is on his flight and Basom and Bill were getting on when I was getting off. Snuck a peak at the monitor at the gate - looked like 52 mph winds in S.F. So close…

7:30 pm - Hour 4- Now I am suspecting a conspiracy. There were only a few people on the flight and there is another one at 9:15. I bet those fuckers bumped us to save a buck. All Southwest flights to Vegas and Oakland are cancelled. They must be conspiring too…

7:45 pm - Just announced an 8:40 take off. We'll see. I have a deep, searing hatred for these fuckers. Thank god David Spade's new sitcom is on the airport TV's to distract me. It, too, is awful. Sidenote: there is a cross-dresser sitting a few rows wearing a English romantic-era bonnet and corset.

8:30 pm - Hour 5 - Back on the plane. Captain Asshole just announced our "wheels up" time to be 9:47 pm, landing time to be a little past midnight. 3 hour delay. We'll see. This means APK will be in San Fran. for approximately 4 hours han solo. He'll be psyched.

1:10 am EST Saturday - Hour 10 - En route on the plane. Forced myself to get some sleep. Going to be a long night.

12:20 am PST - Hour 11 - Finally landed, found AKP in baggage claim, picked up Expedition. The thing is sick. Leather interior, navigation system, back seats that recline, etc…but no tape deck, which is a chafe for iPod compatibility. Later find that Basom has an iTrip, but only his iPod will work...which means we will be forced to listen to They Might Be Giants and The Crash Test Dummies all trip. Pick Basom and Bill up in Oakland @ 2:45. They are looking autumn-harvest-steezariffic. Totally sickbird. On road at 2:50 am.

5:45 am - Hour 16 - In 24 hour Safeway parking lot, Pollock Pines, CA. Rt. 50 is closed until 10:00 am, or so they say. Everyone we meet is jacked up on crystal meth. A really nice man asked us for a ride to Tahoe. Unfortunately we don't have enough room for him. He seems really nice though.

9:30 am -Hour 20 - Pollock Pines is starting to get really jammed up. We hop out of "line" and do some exploring/4 wheeling. The town is nearly over run with people trying to get to ski.

10:00 am - After working our way back into a good spot, Cpt. Farva of the Pollock Pines PD (no joke - that was his name) shows up and starts telling people to get the fuck out of town, go west and go home. Apparently 50 is not going to open for a long time. Avy control and clean-up still pending. We decide to head back down to Placerville and develop a plan. No one else we can think to call has any ideas.

10:15 am - Heading back down to Placerville, twisting one up, we get the call from Arty that 80 is open. We haul ass down, north up 49 to 80.

11:30 am - Hour 22 - Nearly stop to ski the resort up top of Donner Pass. Sugarbowl? Wind is honking and snow is coming down hard. Decide to head all the way down to avoid getting caught out of Tahoe again.

1:15 pm - Hour 24 - Nearly 13 hours after getting in the car and, for APK, 27 hours after starting to travel, we roll into the Homewood parking lot in north lake. Decided on Homewood because of the sheltered terrain from the howling wind. Turns out Squaw shut down at 1:00 and Alpine only opened minimally, so Homewood was a good call for some afternoon laps. Head over to elf-land or something like that to ski some trees. The snow is DEEP. Dense so you don't sink to your waist with your skis or board on, but you would if you took them off. Soft and light enough to go overhead if you lay a turn into it, but firm and bouncy enough to make it really fun to bomb around in. Great for landing. Homewood has lots of gullys with big ass trees and fun little shots. We good get laps in to warm up to the snow, knowing that the next two days are going to be sick sick sick.

[Sidenote: I can't explain to you how much snow there is up there, or how hard it snow the whole fucking time we were there. By the end of the trip we were nearly numb to it, but inevitably driving around every 15 minutes one of us would declare how insane the 15 foot piles of snow on the side of the road were or how hard it was 'gurging and had been since we got there. So, so much fucking snow, so much coverage, and so deep. Keep in mind that every minute we were on the mountain, it was full on spackling snow. We were soaked the whole time.]

4:00 pm - Hour 27 - Hook up with some of my buddies from college - they have a pretty full house so we end up as gracious guests of Lane Meyer, one of my older brother's buddies from college. Lane and his room mate Rob are fired up to ski the next day, as are we. And we are fucking tired, since we have been up for over well 30 hours at this point. Chow some pizza and pass out hard to Hot Dog.

7:00 am Sunday - Hour 40 - Blue bird. Squaw is saying they will be opening upper mountain. At this point it is unclear how much snow they have gotten - multiple feet - but it is sure to be good, since it has been yaking hard all night and forever before that. So fired up. Bomb to Squaw with Lane leading the way. Turns out blue skies were just suckering us out of bed, but oh well. It will be sick. Gear up to the sounds of bombs on the hill (which didn't stop once all day Sunday and Monday) and hop into line at KT-22 at around 7:45. Alkasqualik and Co. are a few ahead of us - we're about chair 10 - Ingrid Backstrom, Rob Gaffney, JT Holmes, etc. all in line. Shit gets pushy in line and nearly a fight. People are fired up to get on the snow. The Fingers look down at us, untracked…

[gonzo]

9:00 am - Hour 42 - I end up riding up my first lift ever at Squaw sitting next to Ingrid Backstrom looking at the Fingers and everything else buried in 2 to 3 feet of freshy, bouncy, soft Tahoe powder. I have no idea where to go. Blown away by the available terrain. We just follow Lane and his buddies. HOLY FUCKING SHIT. First run, first tracks on Chute 75. For those of you that don't know it, it comes straight off the top of KT-22 and is somewhere between 1600 and 1800 of perfectly sustained 35 to 42ish degree slope, approx 50 feet wide. We bomb it. Lane pops the cherry. Maybe 25 full size, bottomless, perfect GS turns maching full speed top to bottom. I like Squaw Valley. Holy fucking shit. We all agree had that run been the only one of the trip, it would have been worth it. I would gladly travel 24 hours for that run again. Lane says it was his best run in 5 years at Squaw. Luckily, there was more. KT-22 blew our minds. So, so much sick terrain served from that lift. We did our best to keep up with Lane and Co. Dead Tree, Rock Garden…short traverses left, right, out, back, all over yield sick steep shots with cool terrain features to be found all the way down. I keep thinking how awesome local knowledge of that hill would be on a day like today. The cliffs at Squaw are not sheer and often require a good about of horizontal distance to reach the landing, so you can't really roll up, scope the landing and drop. You need to know what you are going to hit and where it is…and if you do, you are fucking psyched because there is so much air to be had at Squaw. Hook up with Alka and his buddy George and a girl they were riding with. They are all fucking sick. Head over to Adrenaline Rock from Cornice 2 chair. Lane shoots the chute and stomps it clean. I follow and triple tomahawk down the apron. Sweet. Turn around to see Alka billygoating up to something that does not appear to be skiable. Turns out it was - sick double stager. His buddy George does the same and hits another line of the same sickness. Then this girl they are skiing with (who we later find out is in high school) who is maybe 5 foot 1, 110 pounds lines up her shot. This girl stomped a triple stage 60 foot line. Really really smooth. We would all like to know her name for future reference. She rips. The rest of the day is filled with more of the same. Sick lines, fun drops, awesome terrain. Mildbill wins the Sickbird award of the day for his quad-twisting double release tomahawk. Ben rocks all day on his new knee and APK bombs maching GS turns all over everything. Bill hates the spatulas for not having enough tip to land on (they look pretty small on a 250 lb 6-5 dude) but he'll give them another shot.

2:00 pm - Hour 47 - Spent after a long day, we get a beer at the Chamois to figure out what our next move is. Still nuking snow. We all really want to make it to South Lake, but after some research find that the road to the Weed from South Lake is still closed and it would take several hours to get down there…and upper Squaw may open tomorrow….and we are fucking spent. End up making the call to stay up north and hit Squaw again.

4:00 pm - Hour 49 - Maxin' and relaxin' with Lane and friends. Basom gets wasted, I get wasted, Bill tries to get wasted but he is too big. Eats 7 7-11 burgers instead and scares some people who may or may not have liked meat. Hookas are smoked. We all pass out on floors and couches as the night wares on…tomorrow shall be good. And not crowded. We have no one to ski with but we feel like we can probably find our way to some goods after the amazing tour by Lane and his buds.

7:00 am Monday - Hour 64 - Stopped snowing and has warmed up a bit. We down 7-11 burritos and head to the hill. We hop in first in line at KT-22. Headwall and Granite Chief are on hold and will hopefully be opening. Basom and I get first chair. Fingers have filled in. The terrain continues to blow us away. We head straight to Chute 75 again. First tracks. Again. Basom gets Sickbird for the day for stopping mid-cherry pop to take some pictures of us as we mach by. Snow down low is a bit wet, but still fun. We run another lap to lookers left. So much fun terrain. Fun airs had. Great turns made. Bill loves it on his Spats. They are really made for the heavier Squaw snow - they are like skimmers on top of that stuff. The spat riders (and there are many) are seen maching around the hill everywhere at Squaw, nuking through everything…

10:00 am - Hour 67 - We decide to take a ride up the gondola to see if the snow is drier up top and hopefully catch Granite Chief when it opens. Basom ends up running into his buddy Stan from college. Stan has skied and lived at/near Squaw for three years and is with all of his buddies. We decide to follow them…good call. Head over to Broken Arrow, hike up and get into some great chutes, fun drops, awesome snow, and a killer wind lip. We run another lap. So, so good. Great pitch. Then we see Granite has opened. We bomb over and find a bit of a line, but not much, considering it hasn't been open since at least 8 feet ago. The ride up blows our already blown minds. More great terrain in all directions. Squaw really is Squallywood - I swear you can see every line on the mountain from a lift. And there are so many lines. Super technical lines in every direction and they are getting hit, getting dropped and getting stuck. Really cool to see. Several times riding the lift I would see some dude across the valley picking his way down to some sick exposed cliff and convince myself he is a gape and is going to get cliffed out our get worked. Then they point 'em and hit a double stager I didn't even think about and stomp it clean. And I feel shame. We follow Stan and Co. down more sweet pitches, fun drops, and sick terrain. So so so much fun. Line gets to us after a few laps so we head back to Broken Arrow to burn another, then back to Granite for more. We end up splitting up with Stan and Basom calls it to end on a good note with the new knee. Bill, APK and I burn two more down some fun terrain at Granite (at this point we can barely make turns) and head to Broken Arrow for another run down to the bottom. It is super good. Mashed potatoes at the bottom, but still damn good…

2:30 pm - Hour 73 - Beers and meatballs at the Chamois. Hoping to get snowed in…another 3 feet expected tonight. Looks like the roads are clear and responsibility kicks in. Bill stays behind and APK, Basom and I get gear up to go.

9:00 pm - Hour 80 - In-and-Out mawed on the way back to San Fran…so so glad the trip was made. So many good turns made, good folks met, and good times had. Tahoe kicks ass.

11:30 pm Monday night - Hour 82 - Red-eye back to Chicago 90 hours later. Spent and happy. So glad the trigger was pulled.

6:00 am CST Tuesday morning - Hour 86 - Back in Chicago. 2 hours of sleep in bed before rallying to class…so spent, but so content.

86 hours, 633 miles on the rental car, and hundreds of perfect turns and drops later, it is all said and done. Thanks so much for all of the hospitality, offers of floor space and advice from everyone here. This was definitely one the best trips I have ever been on. Storm chasing with minimal planning and room on a credit card is highly advisable…especially when Tahoe has gotten nearly 200 inches…and Mildbill, Basom, and APK are going to go with you. The trip only would have been better if Honc had not been forced to smell the corporate glove all weekend….

[pics and video to be supplied by Basom. They suck but we have a few…]

[FollowMe]

Basom, et al., way to go!

[Big E]

edit - nevermind, gonzo post #2 came up while I was reading #1...

[gonzo]

BAP BAP BAP!

[Big E]

edit - nevermind, gonzo post #2 came up while I was reading #1...

Okay, finished #2, unbelievable, awesome trip guys. The MCSN comes through again. I'm buzzing just reading that TR.

[Ubersheist]

I end up riding up my first lift ever at Squaw sitting next to Ingrid Backstrom …

That would make the trip entirely worthwhile for me!

Way to get after it, dudes!!

[Vinman]

that did not suck. Glad you guys got some. Took some balls to pull the trigger on that trip.

[basom]

BAP BAP BAP!

bap bap bap.


bill is on the hill right now.


mummyfucker.

[Lane Meyer]

I'm not gonna bother to comment on anything that Gonzo wrote up above - fucking killer writeup man. So great to meet you guys, show you around, and share some Tahoe love at Squallywood. Come back anytime.

So I'll pick up where you guys left off.

January 10th - 05:00 PM - I return home from "work" to find Bill deeply involved in some heavy-duty Law and Order watching on my couch. He looks w-i-p-e-d out. He shares stories of you guys' last day on the hill which make me second guess my decision to tie one on Sunday night since I'd be at work Monday am, but such is the lift of a semi-serious ski bum.

06:00 PM - Calls sent out to people in the 'Hood about burgers at Cottonwood are returned with answers of "nah, we're hunkered down"/"Nope, still shoveling out, we had to crawl in through our kitchen window"/etc. Instead, we accept an offer from my friends down the street to walk down and eat some green curry. Somehow, several glasses of Johnnie Walker Black later, we agree with my friends that the snow "24" is worth watching. Tw hours of my life later (which I can never get back, by the way), it's 10 PM and we're exhausted, so we crash out.

January 11th - 06:30 AM - Woke up to another 6-8 inches of light fluff in Truckee, snowing lightly outside. Anticipating a ride to Squaw from Rob (my roommate), Mildbill was already up and dressed and ready to step out the door. I've been up for the last hour and a half, rehearsing in my head what I'm going to say to my boss to try and get tomorrow off. The forecast calls for continuing heavy snow all day, but inexplicably, the skies over the Martis Valley are clearing. Winds at the mountain are light, overnight snowfall is deep (14-18 there), and crowds are non-existant. And I came to work. I rolled the dice and hoped that the forecast and radar, which show a HUGE blob of yellow parked over the Central Valley, are correct. Tomorrow should still be the day. Fingers crossed.

08:15 AM - Yet today is still poised, for those who are out, to rank in the "high-lifetime days lists" of everyone out wallowing in face shots and buttering high-speed arcs. Bill must be so stoked right now. I just called Cody, who is in line at KT and in position for third chair. What will he drop? Box chute? Main air? Coleman's to the middle knuckle? Anything seems possible into 18" of Alta-style blower. Doubt begins to crash in - should I be there today? Will this ever happen again this year? What if this is it? I'm placing my faith in the radar. She blinded me with science, right?