Our first west coast ski trip!

We were excited to use the Thanksgiving holiday to do some outdoorsy exploring. Our original plan was to do some hiking in Big Sur.

Our plans changed, however, when we heard that the ski resorts around Lake Tahoe had received a ridiculous 7 feet of snow in the last few days, with more snow on the way. It was a no-brainer: we packed up the car and headed for Kirkwood, which we had heard was a friendly ski resort with great snow and good tree skiing. We had no idea how incredible the trip would be!

When we arrived there was so much snow that we had to put chains on our tires just to get to the mountain. Then it kept snowing throughout the day on Saturday, which meant that the snow conditions kept getting better and better as the day went on.

And the place was empty! We practically had the mountain to ourselves. We explored all over, and found deep powder wherever we looked.

pk gets comfy in a tree well

Sunday, if anything, was even better. It was a beautiful blue-sky day, and the overnight snow had covered all the tracks from the day before. In spite of the resort being relatively crowded (at least compared to the day before), there was so much snow on the ground that we were still finding great powder stashes on our last run of the day. The snow was absolutely as light and fluffy as you could hope for. And Kirkwood's trees and hikeable areas make for phenomenal skiing.

Also, PK, for the first time in two years, reported that she could ski with no lingering after-effects of her knee surgery, which was exciting. She ripped-up the slopes, as you can see in the video!

Meanwhile I think we were both surprised at how beautiful the scenery is in the Sierras. We couldn't stop taking pictures during the drive, a small selection of which are posted here.

So Kirkwood gets two thumbs up!



It feels slightly surreal for such great skiing to be a mere car ride away- we're used to having to go Utah to get anything like it (and even then, only when we get lucky with the weather). Granted, this was uncharacteristically fine snow for the Sierra Nevada mountains; many locals have warned us that the typical Tahoe snow conditions consist of  what is descriptively referred to as 'Sierra cement'.

All the same, we keep pinching ourselves at the thought that should Tahoe get a similarly epic snow dump in the future, we're only a few hours drive away!

Here are some videos of us skiing:

O P