Here To There

The alarm went off at 5:00 am and we were on the road by 5:30. Next time we should pack the trunk the night before to cut down on take off time. The drive up took exactly 3 hours, so we were at the mountain by 8:30 and on the slopes by 9. The snow was amazing!! Some good runs that I checked out were the Palisades, Scott’s Chute, The Chute That Seldom Slides and Promised Land.

On Apine Bowl Lift, the Palisades is good. To get there, go to the top of Alpine Bowl lift, traverse under the hut and as far as you can go. You can basically head straight down (crossing the grommed run occaisionally) to hit the most off-piste. Don’t bother doing the hike directly out the left side of the hut unless you’re going to High Traverse. As far as I could tell, it doesn’t get you around the cornice to Lower Saddle/Keyhole.

Scott’s Chute, The Chute That Seldom Slides and Promised Land are all off Scott Chair. Good access to Scott’s Chute if you ski to the top of the run and head down in the trees to the right. You can then keep veering right for maximum trees. I still need to find the official entry to The Chute That Seldom Slides, which is to the left of Scott Chair (off of Scott Ridge Run). I tried going along the cliff line parrallel to the run until I ran into it. There has to be a better approach. Also, the next time I go on Promised Land I’m going to try to stay as far right as I can (close to the boundary). I found a cut off towards the bottom that cuts out the hike out. PS - Don’t try to ski to your car if you’re parked on the opposite side of the lot!! It’s a long walk around.

Next time I want to try High Traverse, which can start out on Summit 6 or Alpine Bowl Chair. From Summit 6, take the high traverse/hike and from Alpine Bowl Chair take the hike directly out the left side of the hut. Drop down to Sherwood Chair from there. Also, when coming back up Sherwood Chair, you can head directly over to the front by going through the trees for some pretty steep looking runs. The other thing to try out is how to get to Badger Bowl. I think you just cut across the entrace to Wolverine Bowl and hike over the ridge.

The drive back was fine until we hit Berkeley. It took us 2 hours to get home from that point. Remember to pack food in the car in case you don’t want to have to stop for some!

We drove to Reno on Friday night. The drive took from about 8:00 pm to 12:30 am. Not much traffic, but it wasn’t easy since we were so tired. We stayed at the Sands—wouldn’t recommend staying there again; the Nugget is a much better dive. Michael, Shannon and Thad drove up a little later and got in around 2 am.

We took off at about 8:30 am for NorthStar, and arrived there around 9:15 am. Getting to the top of the mountain involves 3 chair lifts, so we didn’t start our first run until 10:30 am. The mountain didn’t feel very big: you were either on the front lifts with a ton of people or skiing the backside with a limited number of runs. I don’t love the resort.

Sam and I flew to Tucson to visit his dad and his family for the long weekend. We flew Delta (never again!) through Salt Lake. The mountains were beautiful and I was dying to go skiing, but I forgot all about the snow when we got there. The weather was of course beautiful and we spent some time hiking Finger Rock and eating tasty food (as always!). Those visits are always too short!