April 24, 2010 Kirkwood

This was Kirkwood’s closing weekend, and the party animals had arrived for the festivities. They reduced lift tickets to $48 for adults and $32 for us seniors. Plus, if you showed them your season pass from a closed ski area, you received 2 lift tickets for the price of 1. So Grandma Jill and I paid a total of $32 for 2 tickets. Periodically being old has its advantages. Hillary and Dale joined us and we spent 4 hours of high speed cruising in brilliant sunshine and corn snow. Kirkwood has some very challenging terrain, including 3 or 4 high angle runs which are groomed. We spent almost 2 hours cruising the high angle terrain as the sun softened the various aspects. By 1pm “The Wall” had softened, and bodies were descending and splattering along its borders. We were ripping through one of the terrain parks (off to the side, not over the terrain features) when a young skier darted between me and Jill and Hillary; he then took a hard tumble after going over one of the features. When asked if he was okay, he responded with “I think I’ve dislocated my shoulder”. Cutting off Jill or Hillary is dangerous. :

After 4 hours, the lower slopes became sticky and it was time leave. We returned to find the person who parked next to us with an ice pack on his calf. We just had to spend some time with him sharing body injury stories, drinking cold beer in the sun, and answering all sorts of questions about backcountry skiing. We then spent a couple of hours checking out touring options around Carson Pass. The snow pack is healthy, but the snow from the recent storm has not corned up sufficiently. We decided to head for the Eastern Sierra on Sunday after camping near Grover Hot Springs on National Forest land.

Photo: Jill and Hillary getting some avy dog love.