Winter/Spring

Hello Skiers and Riders,

Happy Thanksgiving to all. Rain fell the past couple of days over our beautiful mountains, washing away snow, especially on the lower slopes. Today, sun is shining from a cloudless sky. It is very warm sitting in the sun. We are lucky our days are short this time of year. The good news is that it froze last night and snow guns could be heard spraying manmade snow over the slopes. The bad news was that early this morning slopes had a firm surface of ice covering them. Small rain ruts ran down mountainsides.

Since it is a holiday, and Squaw Valley was open for skiing, we decided to give the hill a try. Squaw was running Gold Coast, Shirley Lake, and Red Dog in the morning. Although there were not all that many people on the hill, the lack of available terrain overcrowded the slopes and created some slow lift lines (especially on Gold Coast). There was one groomed run on Shirley Lake and one or
two off Gold Coast. The rest of the mountain looked good, but was a sheet of ice. As the morning progressed, and sun began to melt south facing surfaces, skiing got better. We were able to make turns off the groomed areas in nice spring snow. We skied until noon taking a last firm run down Red Dog. Emigrant was scheduled to open around 1 O’clock, and might have offered some nice smooth
spring skiing, but we ran out of patience waiting in the Gold Coast line. You have to download the Tram or Funitel, as there is not enough snow on the Mountain Run.

I was happy to see that the coverage on the upper mountain was pretty good. There are not as many rocks showing as I thought there would be, but heavy skier traffic and warm temperatures may change that in the coming days. At leastthere is some skiing for those of you who cannot wait.

Enjoy your day,

Andy