Welcome home

It’s been a minute since Sugar opened with just a thin white road or two off Jerome.  Someone on the chair said 2017.. sounds right?  In any case, I was super happy to make any turns at all.  Reese met some friends to play with, the sun came out in the afternoon, it’s great to be back on snow.

Hoping for something in the forecast soon…

Bonus Season!

In which the Unofficial Sugar Bowl Ski Team visits those Other Mountains, sporting our helmet ears and rocking beats.

I’m pretty sure we ran into the other team Unoff at Sherwood last week, we definitely made turns and traded stickers with Team Tie Dye, and I was super thrilled to run into all you Sugar peeps out there too!

Shop (like a) local: Donner Summit Avalanche Dogs

Should we talk about Disco running into our new CEO at the Belt Room? Last pow day of the year? The corn harvest?

Nope, not today! Today we’re going to remind you to support our patrol’s Avy Dogs!  Get your merch from patrol at the top of Disney.

Avy Dog merch for sale!
T-shirts and more!

In addition to a bunch of T-shirt designs (my favorite is the black one with the dynamite!), there’s also goggle covers, hats, and buffs with each of our adorable patrol dogs.  Are you on Team Buster, Team Nova or Team Graupel?

Mondays

Managed to arrive just as Dis opened.  What do you know, we can get snow without insane wind transport.. who knew?!  Every line in Dis was lovely, gates opened early, lapped freshies in South Dis while too many people waited in line at Lincoln… wow!

Ran into a highly branded Mr. OpenSnow on skis at Hard Drinkin’ Lincoln just as it opened.   Guessing it was CEO Joel Gratz, as our local homey BA is a boarder.   😉

Also managed to run into most of the Unofficial Ski Team during the rest of the epic afternoon.. Finn definitely launched it big in Steielhang!  I got freshies down  Carl’s Nose & Coinslot (formerly cliff) rollover, hell yeah!  ’58s with Will & A, Fourth Sister with Christa & Mean Dean.  F**** yeah!

Rare pic from second sister cave 1.45ish as it started to dump again

Picture of Second Sister at Sugar Bowl, California
View from Second Sister Cave!

Last day of Juneuary!

Or, as BA over at Opensnow put it, “The Mid-Winter Lull is Over”.  Time to bundle up and crush some pow!

Today was beautiful and sunny with spring-like conditions. A classic Tahoe Juneuary day, and our last one of the year. Next time we have a nice sunny day it’ll be real spring!  I thought things would be over-the-top busy but it was way emptier than I thought.  No road/tubing/overflow parking even.

I was lucky enough to find some friends and explore a new (to me) backcountry zone off the back of Crow’s.  I’m pleased to report the corn harvest was successful! Creamy and perfect. Thanks Mean Dean, Christa, Kern and posse!

And I found some bonus spelunkers in Dis cave.  😉

Hype train incoming! And, how to watch the weather

Hype is in full effect, storms are coming in next week!

Let’s have a quick talk about the best sites where you can obsess about the weather.

Number one these days is of course our good friend KCASODAS9, the Soda Springs point forecast.  In addition to counting the feet I also like to check on the daily graphs for temperature and wind to help me plan my layers and whether Reese needs his coat, hehe.

The good ol’ Tahoe Daily Snow is also worth a read if you’re willing to pony up a few bucks for a subscription.   Unfortunately, these days you can’t even read the daily snow without subscribing.  I enjoy BA’s prose and how stoked he gets about storms, though I admit the super geeky weather model discussion is mostly beyond me.

And last but not least, shout out to the Sierra Avalanche Center!  Always check their daily advisory before heading out the boundary.

Bluebird Friday, a stormy weekend and an empty bluebird Tuesday

Wow. What a start to the season!

Friday brought us the season’s first pow day, and what a glorious day it was! Dry, blower pow and sunshine.

Storms over the weekend, and Disney opened on Sunday offering a nice change from Lincoln laps.

Tuesday was once again sunny and bluebird!  Patrol worked their asses off and we were treated to tons of new terrain. Sugar Bowl, the Sisters and Silver Belt all opened for the first time this season. So exciting to see all those gates open!

And… 5 (?!) feet on the way this weekend. Saturday looks like positively brutal blizzard conditions, not sure even this die-hard storm skier will brave that.  Sugar is top-notch when it comes to operating in storm conditions but I don’t know what lifts they’ll be able to run Saturday.  I wouldn’t be surprised if it was just Jerome, Tree and Nob.

Ready for more snow?

Sugar sure has seen a lot of sunshine lately. This weekend’s snow should bury a few more rocks and level out these deep moguls on Rahlves. Will Disney open?