Playing in the snow
The recent big storms dumped a lot of snow up in the Sierras. This weekend was the first clear weekend since the storms, and happened to be one of the local surf shop's bus trips to Kirkwood, so I signed up and caught the bus up to the slopes.
As you might imagine, the bus was full and the slopes were crowded as everyone wanted to take advantage of the recent big dump. Unfortunately, it had apparently briefly rained at Kirkwood on Thursday night and it made the ungroomed snow crusty rather than the lovely fluffy stuff it should have been.
The groomed slopes were good from the get go, and some of the ungroomed stuff got OK after it warmed up, and I ended up having a lot of fun, even if I did have to wait in a lot more lift lines than I was expecting thanks to the large crowds.
The above photo was taken from the top of chair 6 (see in foreground) and the top of the Zachary run (which I was about to head down, though you can't really see it in this photo as it's over the lip of snow at the bottom of the image) - you can see the base area on the bottom left and chair 2 taking people to the backside towards the right of the photo (it's way off in the distance on the other side of the valley).
As usual, I geeked out and had the GPS with me - 32 miles (combined lift and run total) covered and a max of 33 mph coming down Elevator Shaft on the backside - full geeky details here.
The whole bus option worked well too - I feel a lot fresher today (the day after) than I normally do after a snowboard trip even though I did have to get up very early to catch the bus at 3:30am.
As you might imagine, the bus was full and the slopes were crowded as everyone wanted to take advantage of the recent big dump. Unfortunately, it had apparently briefly rained at Kirkwood on Thursday night and it made the ungroomed snow crusty rather than the lovely fluffy stuff it should have been.
The groomed slopes were good from the get go, and some of the ungroomed stuff got OK after it warmed up, and I ended up having a lot of fun, even if I did have to wait in a lot more lift lines than I was expecting thanks to the large crowds.
The above photo was taken from the top of chair 6 (see in foreground) and the top of the Zachary run (which I was about to head down, though you can't really see it in this photo as it's over the lip of snow at the bottom of the image) - you can see the base area on the bottom left and chair 2 taking people to the backside towards the right of the photo (it's way off in the distance on the other side of the valley).As usual, I geeked out and had the GPS with me - 32 miles (combined lift and run total) covered and a max of 33 mph coming down Elevator Shaft on the backside - full geeky details here.
The whole bus option worked well too - I feel a lot fresher today (the day after) than I normally do after a snowboard trip even though I did have to get up very early to catch the bus at 3:30am.
posted by Tim H at 3:58 PM
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