Video of a mid-afternoon run down the Rabbit Chutes.
- Squaw + 72” of 0.8% snow = A Life Experience
- 72” storm total.
- 580” snow total at Squaw Valley USA International Mountain Resort.
- 0.8% water content snow.
- 80 closed from Applegate to Nevada state line for an entire day due to white out conditions.
- A pressure reading of 981 mb at the center of the low pressure system that came thru, which is the pressure of a category 1 hurricane and one of the lowest ever recorded in CA.
- Another 2feet on Wednesday night, then a stronger storm Thursday, then another storm Sunday, with the potential for over 5 feet between now and Monday.
- Non-stop snowstorm since thursday…and it’s STILL snowing right now (5:24pm Monday).
Do I really need to convey anything else? Yes I do, because it soothes me. What else is there to say? Welp, we can say the skiing was just simply splendid. The main reason it was so splendiferous was that it was just straight up neck deep powder skiing. There was no need to huck yourself (unless you were Jason Dobb’s big mountain team that was doing stupid-foot backflips, 360s, and lincoln loops off Ice Goddess) or scare yourself at all (unless you were one of the geniuses that skied The Fingers on Saturday and found out that the take offs and landings were all ice). All you had to do was luxuriate within in-your-face, literally, powder skiing bell to bell.
Was there a hitch? Well, yes…there always is. The line on KT was Brobdingnagian (psss, it means big and using it makes me feel smart). Luckily, the Squaw Creek and Red Dog lines were Lilliputian (read Gulliver’s Travels) and the snow was even deeper over there. Duane’s Run was balls-deep and I had a true life experience in there on Saturday with the 26” of 0.8% powder snow. Ever seen those movies where the people are skiing down a low angle slope, you can’t see their lower bodies, smoke is erupting like out of a grenade behind them, and they are pole planting like gorillas? Yep, that was me and Duane on Duane’s run on Saturday. A life experience.
Here is the breakdown:
SATURDAY, MARCH 19 – The best powder I’ve ever skied all day long. Icy, hard Fingers. Big KT line.
SUNDAY, MARCH 20 – Stupid deep. Happy fun powder laps all day. KT line not too bad.
MONDAY, MARCH 21 – 5 inches on top of chop on lower mountain. Broken Arrow open with 72” of untouched snow.. 3 tragic wannabe stunt monkeys ski Sacrafice. V-Rock also hit, hard landing. Red Dog, Squaw Creek, KT still good. Very bad KT line until BA opened.
What didn’t open? The only lifts that have been open in the past 4 days (that gave us 72”) were KT, Squaw Creek, Red Dog, Broken Arrow, Shirley Lake, Solitude. The rest of the mountain is still fresh and waiting for you.
The only problems are that: the Headwall chairs are all stacked at the bottom and buried in about 3 feet of snow, Granite is a patrollers nightmare, and Silverado is gonna need a half crazed ninja cat diver that is comfortable with methamphetamines to get the road in before patrol can even throw a bomb.
BOTTOMLINE: Our only chance at the upper mountain between now and next Tuesday is tomorrow and it’s likely going to be too windy and just plain too difficult to get anything up there open. We’ll see, but I think we’ll be lucky to get Siberia going tomorrow.