• Welcome to AlpineZone, the largest online community of skiers and snowboarders in the Northeast!

    You may have to REGISTER before you can post. Registering is FREE, gets rid of the majority of advertisements, and lets you participate in giveaways and other AlpineZone events!

Tour de California -- Mammoth, Tahoe + camping in Death Valley!

abc

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 2, 2008
Messages
5,811
Points
113
Location
Lower Hudson Valley
Did an (almost) 2 week trip of southern and central California:

-- Mammoth, 3 days
-- Homewood
-- Alpine Meadow
-- Mt Rose

Orginally planned for a week at Mammoth, situation was such I could have almost 2 weeks instead of just 1. Well, the more the merrier. So I added the Tahoe part, which has a tale of its own...

--------- PART I: Mammoth ----------

Flight into Las Vages instead of LAX, just because I scored a better flight. Then lucked out with a SUV at a better rate than a econo-box. Vacation is looking up...:)

More over, I got a screaming deal staying next to the main lodge. So I'm doing it in style and without breaking the bank! ;)

Arrived at Mammoth and hooked up with some friends. Was informed they had a powder day the day before and the forecast was in the 40's and 50's the rest of the week! :(

First day was mostly groomer day, since I was with a bunch of people who're blue cruisers. Only at the very end of the day, when everyone was ready to call it quits, I decided to take it up a notch and came down one of the "chutes", according to the trail map. (not really chutes. you can still makes wide turns and even travers a bit)

Day 2 was forecasted to be super windy as the day goes. So I decided to do the top ridge in the morning, before my group even make it up the mountain. When I got out of the gandola and put my skis on, I nearly got blown right off the ridge!!! It must have been 40+mph at the minimum. The day's weather condition was winds gust in excess of 60mph. I don't know if I was in those "moments" of high gust, but it was the highest wind I've ever experienced on skis. Really had to get those edges in to stay on track! Needless to say, the ridge itself was totally void of snow, all blown away by the wind. :(

But what the wind took from the ridge, it deposits it on the slope!!! :snow:So despite not having any storm, we actually got thick, fluffy powder on the slopes off the ridge. :beer: And as soon as one skier passes, his/her tracks would be erased by the new snow blown in by the wind. It's fresh track each run, like in an actual powder day! :spread: Lapping the upper section of the gondola every 10-15 minutes, it was just skier heaven for half a day! (the rest of the upper mountain lifts were all closed due to high wind)

Just when I got my fill of the fresh powder off the ridge and was just thinking of resting my legs while grabing a luch, I noticed they just started turning the other upper mountain lifts that's been close all morning. I figure there must been tons of powder under those lifts that hadn't been skied yet. So lunch have to wait. ;) Always the BC skier in heart, I have water on my back and couple of powerbars in the pack. That was enough to keep me going. And going I did till the lift closed at 4!:grin:

My legs should have been tired. Though skiing "hero snow" must be easy work. And with the excitement of the new terrain and fresh powder, I just didn't notice any fatique. ;)

Day 3 was a bit of a repeat of the previous day, only better! :) It's Friday so the slopes were busier. But the crowd also includes another friend of mine who's more an advance skier so I had someone to ski with. And after a good day and a half of winds depositing powder to the steeper section of the ridge, it's finally skiable!!! We did several passes of the chutes on both side of chair 23. Light, fluffy snow filled steep makes for the highlight of the day.

And just when we were finally ready to call it quits, we happened upon some really deep powder hidden on an easy "black-blue" run. So we did a double take and lapped that up, TWICE!

That, provides the fitting end of the first part of skiing Mammoth.

It's Friday night and had I choose to stay at Mammoth, it would have cost a small fortune, being CA school spring break weekend. So instead, I hopped into my car and started driving up towards Tahoe...

(no photo this part of the trip, too busy skiing)
 

abc

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 2, 2008
Messages
5,811
Points
113
Location
Lower Hudson Valley
--------- PART II: Tahoe ----------

I've lived in CA for a few years a while back. So I knew "most" of the resorts around the lake...

Homewood, however, was one that I never got around to try before. It's small by Tahoe standard. Only about 1500' elevation but right on the lake and easy to get to. I have a free ticket from my Descente jacket so it's the perfect excuse to give it a try. Since it hasn't snowed for a few weeks, the south part of highway 89 from South Lake Tahoe was open, making it possible for me to stay at SLT and have more option of nightlife and resturants. It's only a tad over half an hour to get from SLT to Homewood. Parked right next to the slope and hopped on the lift in 5 minutes!

While small by CA standard, it skis about like Bellearye or Hunter. Not super difficult but a good variety of terrain.There're plenty of easy woods to spice things up, though since it hadn't snowed for days, most were not too inviting. Still, I can see the potential, for a place that's truely low key and totally not busy, even on a Saturday of a spring break week. Towards the latter part of the afternoon, the snow in the woods soften up just enough, I ventured into the easiest of it and had a blast! I was the only one there, the locals were too spoiled to bother with such "marginal" conditions! ;)

Fabulous view of Lake Tahoe from many runs. My camera got as much of a work out as my skis!

Photo: http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8IasWLVw3Zsb4


Alpine Meadow was one of my favorates from my days of living in the Bay area. So it's high time I went back for a "hello to old friend" day. Except a small storm had moved in and it was snowing heavily at 11 o'clock. 5 years after moving away from it, I didn't remember as well as I would have like to in a low visibility day. A chair ride to the top proved to be a mistake. I could barely see the next lift towers so groping my way down to the lower part of the mounntain, where I stayed and wait for the storm to move out.

And move out it did, after leaving a couple inches new (albeit heavy) snow on the hard packed base. Again, "hero snow"!

After the cloud lifted, the lake came into view. But I left my camera in the car because I didn't think I had any use of it in such a snowy day. :( Ha! Forgot about the mountain weather changes quickly. Alpine is a proper western mountain, a lot bigger than just about any of the eastern resorts. So one day really wasn't enough to even hit all the good stuff. I merely sampled a small part of it and repeat runs that happen to have good condition. I skied till the very end, squeezing into the corral as the lifty was roping it off... ;)

The original plan was to return to Mammoth on Sunday evening and ski Monday and Tuesday. But the forecast called for a foot of snow on the Tahoe area and zero for Mammoth. So it seemed a sensible thing to do is to hang around at Tahoe instead. So plan was chaged and stayed I did.

Mt Rose is another of my favorate from my Bay Area days. It's on the east side of the lake, on the Nevada side. It's a high resort, so position the best to receive the most snow (and all snow when it's mixed on other lower lying resorts) So the easiest bed base for it is actually staying at Reno. $25 got me a huge room at the Sands Casino, with health club with whirl pool, steam room &.sauna. Prime Rib buffet cost an additional $9.99...

That's when my nightmare of credit card and liftopia incompatibility starts. Regular Mt Rose day ticket was $69, or $62 at the casino. Liftopia was $41 including a lunch voucher of $12. So it's a siginficant enough deal to motivate me to fight the credit card issue to get it. In the end, it worked, but it took an aggrevating hour. :(

Monday morninng, Mt Rose was only running 3 of its 7(?) lifts. The rest were on wind hold. Though that's not a surprise for me. I knew the area well and it gets a lot of wind. Still, there should be enough terrain on the leeward side of the mountain to play with, especially consider the amount of snow it received (~ a foot)!

It was still snowing lightly and visibility was nill as typically the case. Jumping off the lift into the soup, I felt the stink of the ice hitting my exposed skin. So hurriedly I dropped into the nearest run, which was an un-groomed black. There were a foot of snow alright, it's the consistancy of wet cement that's about to settle into concrete!!!

I spend the next couple of runs trying to find better snow SOMEWHERE on the mountain, to little avail. Resigned to enjoy the wet cement as best as I can, I slowly got used to skiing the stuff, well, kind of.

Oddly enough, for the 3 years I live out there, I somehow managed to miss actually skiing the famous Sierra cement, only to learn to deal with it after I moved away!!!

I was totally exhausted by 2:30 so decided to call it quits while I was ahead. Live to ski another day kind of my thinking. Only problem was, the next day were expected to be more or less the same, only worse. The rain/snow level would be even higher therefore the snow even heavier (for the resorts high enough to get snow) With my legs turned jelly by the day of hard cement skiing, I was simply not motivated to think about the skiing of the next day. So I didn't bother ordering tickets but wait to see how it turns out in the morning...

Needless to say, there's no photo on that day either.

The next day dawn rainy. And the resorts reports were all gloomy as forecasted. So I bagged it and drove down to Death Valley for the last part of my vacation: camping under the (almost) full moon in the desert!
 
Last edited:

abc

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 2, 2008
Messages
5,811
Points
113
Location
Lower Hudson Valley
I can't seem to be able to upload photos.

Out of 3 tries, 1 was successful. But when I wanted to add one more to it, it erased even those I uploaded earlier. So tomorrow I'll post it on Picasa and put in a link instead.
 
Top