Skiing in shorts last week.  Yeah it was warm.

Also some dog-sitting.  He looks comfy.

-Nick

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The Sierras received a nice dusting this week.  Hopefully it’s the start of a big year!

-Nick

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Awesome to get one last day of skiing in on Friday.  Drove up with Simon from Bryn’s work.  The sun was shining at Kirkwood and temps were probably in the mid-to-upper 50s.  The crazy thing is they’d gotten 18 inches of freshies earlier in the week, but by 10am it was concrete.

Everyone was having a great time enjoying the last few runs of the season.  It was a party atmosphere on the patio during lunch and we had some fun on the slush moguls and groomers before they got too sticky.

Kirkwood has enough snow to stay open probably another month, but Sunday was their last day.  I guess the customers have switched to spring-summer mode.

-Nick

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The owner of this snowboard throws up a giant F-U to Kirkwood’s management:

Still, not as good as the people at Sea-Tac smoking directly under the no-smoking signs.  Civil disobedience — it tastes like freedom!

-Nick

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Have you ever found yourself on the road, making great time, minding your own business, and then WHAM you’re stuck in someone else’s traffic jam?

Last week I went up skiing, which was awesome, but got myself caught in the middle of Sacramento’s evening rush hour on the way home.  Aside from Sacramento, I’ve been the victim of other people’s traffic in Portland, Santa Rosa, and LA.  Other people’s traffic is far more frustrating than your own traffic for a couple reasons.

1. You don’t know the typical traffic patterns, so you have no idea where it is likely to break up, or if it is “normally” this bad.
2. You don’t want to go where these people are going.  You’re just passing through.  In fact, if they’d just let you pass, you’d be out of their way.

Traffic you encounter on your daily commute is frustrating, but tolerable, because it is expected and predictable.  Other people’s traffic is traffic you have no business being in, unexpected and unpredictable.  You are an innocent bystander graciously using these other people’s roads when all of a sudden they swarm you.

It’s the tax levied by the good people of Sacramento: if you’re going to go skiing on a Thursday when the rest of us are working, you’re going to pay for it on the way home.

-Nick

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Last week there was a break in the weather and I went to Bear Valley with a couple of Bryn’s co-workers.  It was my first time at that mountain, and it was really sunny and warm.  The ungroomed stuff was kind of deadly, apparently it had rained to create a nice layer of crust.  It was pretty grabby and parts had slid in mini-avalanches.  But the rest was good.

A word of warning to future Bear skiers: Lunch Run is not as delicious as it sounds, and it will not lead you back to the lodge for lunch.  Instead it will lead you to the Bear Valley Village, some 2 miles down the road.  Thankfully there was a free shuttle that took us back to the main base area!  It only runs once an hour, so when we only had to wait 20 minutes, we considered ourselves lucky.

Later in the afternoon, we went back to the entrance of Lunch Run, and sure enough, there were probably half a dozen warning signs with text like:

• “Do not ski this run alone.”
• “Ride with someone who has skied Lunch Run before.”
• “No lift access.”
• “No easy way down.”
• “Check shuttle schedule before riding.”

How we missed all those, I have no clue.  But at least it was a good adventure!  And the snow was pretty good when you managed to stay above the ice crust layer.   And there were plenty of fresh tracks to be had, which probably should have been another warning sign.

The next day Bryn and I went to Squaw Valley, where most of the upper mountain was closed due to high winds.  And it was rainy at the bottom…gross.

-Nick

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We had a great time skiing up at Tahoe (Sierra-at-Tahoe, Heavenly) last weekend.  It was kind of a blizzard so the camera didn’t make it out of the jacket pocket.  There were plenty of high-speed groomers, big bumps, and some soft stuff in the woods too.

There’s a great deal going on at Shell gas stations this winter.  Buy 10 gallons of gas and get a Buy One Get One free lift ticket voucher valid at Northstar or Sierra.  You’ll pay maybe a couple bucks more for your tank of gas, but save $69 on the price of an adult full-day ticket.  Other areas are also participating, so even if you’re not in Nor-Cal you can check out skifreedeals.com for the inside scoop.

Looking forward to making another trip before the end of the season!

-Nick

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Chris and I went skiing on Monday.  It was a “blue-bird day,” but very cold — a forecasted high of 9 degrees.  Side note: I’d been skiing 22 years before I ever heard the term “blue-bird day,” which is apparently a very common skier’s term to describe a sunny day on the mountain.  Chris’s explanation was that the majority of those 22 years were spent skiing at Snoqualmie Pass.

Off the beaten path was pretty much an icy death, but the groomers were fun.  So we mostly stayed on the paved road and did plenty of straight-lining.  And something happened that makes sense but I never knew it was possible — we gave ourselves ice cream headaches from the speed and cold.  No crashes, no ice cream, just the super-cold air hitting the roof of the mouth.  It was awesome, in kind of a hurty, bitter-cold sort of way.

-Nick

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Tomorrow I’m off on another South American adventure, meeting up with Chris in Buenos Aires Saturday morning.  We’ve got a week to explore the country before rendezvous-ing with dad in Bariloche for some August Patagonian skiing.

Time to dust off the old español, avoid the swine flu and tango-ing seductresses, get fat and happy from parillas and malbec, and blend in with the locals like only three 6-ft gringos can.

SFO –> ATL –> EZE

AEP –> IGR –> FTE –> BRC –>AEP

EZE –> IAH –> SFO

-Nick

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I’m working on planning an August trip to Argentina for some mid-summer Southern Hemisphere skiing.  Anybody want to come with?

I found this picture today and it just reminded me how snow brings out the best in people.

Should be good times.

UPDATE 6/18: Flights booked!

-Nick

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