Isn’t it nice when the weather cooperates and gives us winter conditions during the winter? We have had a welcome return to winter this week and the skiing has kept getting better since the snow fell on Monday and Tuesday.
Palisades Tahoe is reporting 17” of total snowfall on the upper mountain at 8,000’ in the last seven days. The storm came in cold and dropped a nice blanket of super dry, cold pow. We’re talking shovel-the-driveway-with-one-hand-while-sipping-on-my-coffee kind of snow. Light. Fluffy. Goodness!
There were definitely dust on crust conditions throughout the day on Monday and Tuesday, but as the skier traffic has packed down that flufftastic goodness, the snow conditions have gotten more consistent and I was feeling a lot less of the base crust than is the last two days.
My hands-down favorite run of the day was Hogsback. Headwall in general was skiing very well today as it was in a cloud for most of the storm with poor visibility. With the clouds clearing by late morning, it was mostly bluebird turns on the upper mountain.
Siberia was also holding some great snow from the smooth groomer to the ridge which was holding some deepish turns, to the bowl which had some soft bumps to… the Palisades!! It was great to see a surprise Palisades opening, which totally caught me off guard. Thank you Ski Patrol!! I personally did not ski the Palisades today as I was having too much fun on the soft bumps that are covering the upper mountain. That, and I really get along well with gravity. I like to work WITH her and flow down the mountain, rather than fight against her and tire out my poor little legs.
I would consider today one of my top five days of the season and I’m excited for more blue skies and cold temps in our future.
