Saturday, March 8, 2014

Another powder day! (4th in a little over a week - 3 in Tahoe and 1 at home!)

The traffic was terrible on Friday night heading up to the mountains so Tucker and I stayed at home and decided we would go to Winter Park on Saturday morning.   There was a big upslope happening which should mean that Eldora, Loveland and Winter Park would get the most snow AND we could avoid some of the I-70 highway traffic.   Well, one out of two isn't bad, right?   Traffic?  BAD.   There was a roll over and then a jack knifed semi.  (sigh)

Snow?   Good/Amazing.   See below.   We found some trees with about 16" or more of fresh at every turn.   We got in 3 runs there and headed for some other areas.   We were tired and headed home after lunch.   A great day on the hill!






 

The house turns 107 years old!

Our cute little bungalow was built in 1907 but I bet it's never gotten anything in the mail like this before ---





Happy Birthday, house!


Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Monopalooza 2014

MonoP 2014 - South Lake Tahoe -->



This is probably not as interesting as some of our more 'original' posts but it will still be interesting, I promise.

First, let's review MonoP 2013 , MonoP 2012, MonoP 2011, MonoP 2010, and MonoP 2009.  Whew, we've been at this blogging (and monoskiing) thing for a while!

This year was at South Lake Tahoe.   Tucker and I managed to get 1 day at Squaw (with our nephew, Mark!)

We also got in 2 days at Kirkwood, 2 days at Heavenly and 1 day at Sierra at Tahoe in our 6 days in Tahoe.  There was powder almost every day after the area starting off to the driest winter in history!  Squaw was about 6 days away from closing (in FEBRUARY!) before the 1st major storm hit.  Pretty sure we were there for the 2nd.

Scotty took me skiing for the first run at Heavenly on the first day there.... and we set off a pretty good avalanche.   You can see the trail sign above us - this was in resort!  it was about 20 feet wide, 7 inches deep and ran about 30 feet.   Big enough to injure and definitely big enough to kill.  Neither of us were caught in it and we skied away and hooted and hollered through the powder.  If you look closely at the first picture below you can see the fracture line and the runout.   The 2nd photo is Scotty in the runout - he skied around it.




 The view of the lake from the deck of the house we were staying in....


The snow in the parking lot at Heavenly!


 View from the front side of Heavenly.


 Our good friend Tom, aka 'Doc Mono' died this past summer from cancer so we collected and skied a single, silent run in his honor.



 Then the chair lift at Sierra at Tahoe broke and this was the resulting line/pile up at the adjacent lift.



All in all it was a great trip and I can't wait for the next MonoP!   Look for us next year somewhere new - Jackson Hole!