January 29-30,2013 Squaw Valley,CA

January 29: It was a sunny, but very blustery day.  We parked at the Far East Express lift because most visitors park near the gondola & tram area, and more important it’s a lot shorter distance to walk (much shorter than at Crystal)!   On the weekend they charge $20 to park in the lot near the cable cars, and you get to walk through the Village to the tram or gondola cars.  By parking at the Far East Express lift we walked 15 feet to get on the snow and then on the lift.  The only people at this lift seemed to be locals.   From the lift top at about 1400vf you can ski to the area to get on the Funitel gondola.   But both the Funitel and tram cars were closed, and the whole upper mountain was on a wind closure including the KT-22 Express lift.  We skied for 1.5 hours, but the wind was not very friendly or appealing.  We skied only groomers, but it was not getting any better.  The ride on the Red Dog lift was a “memorable ride” because of the incredible terrain – trees, cliffs, long expanses of being suspended very high in the air (which was no fun in the wind), etc.  The area below the lift has been skied, but needs another dump to be skiable.   Jill has 2 lift rides that she really doesn’t like, and this is one of them!   We decided to go to Truckee for a shower at the Rec Center, had a great dinner at Zano’s Italian restaurant, and did some shopping at the local Safeway.  We spent the night at Squaw Valley where we have a great Verizon Wireless connection.

January 30:  The day was sunny, and the flags on the poles were quiet.  We parked at the Far East Express lift again and walked all of 5 feet to get on the snow.  We skied down to the Funitel; all of the lifts were running, including the gondola and the tram, and the temperature was 31 degrees.  There is some great steep terrain most of which is ungroomed; and some of the lifts on the backside were not running.   By following the sun we found corn snow.  We skied the groomers for 4 hours with a 30 minute lunch break to refresh the legs.  This is my 3rd day in a row, and I’m feeling better each day.  The base area is 6200’ and we skied to 8700’.   We skied 11,800vf and 12 runs in the sun with no wind.  Jill is strong, and it’s great to watch her looking for the perfect groomed slopes.  There are large terrain parks that we skied on sunny corn slopes.  At 2pm it was time to get to our Roadtrek and do some work on the generator.   It was interesting looking at all of the steeper areas (like those off KT-22) that we’ve skied before and really enjoyed, that now have little or no appeal.  Guess it’s all a matter of time and place in our lives…