Squaw Valley USA

Reno is just an hour's bus ride from several ski hills surrounding Lake Tahoe. I remembered Squaw Valley from one of Warren Miller's movies (it is also famous for hosting the 1960 Olympic winter games), and so chose it as the destination of our 2008 spring skiing excursion. My favorite run was the Woman's Downhill, a pretty steep dropoff into a slightly narrowed neck off peak KT-22, accessible via the KT-22 Express chairlift. KT-22 is one of five peaks on the mountain (second from the left in the pic below).

Eventually, we skiied all five peaks, usually starting out by taking the Gold Coast Funitel gondola to the station up at 8200′ elevation just between Squaw Peak and Emigrant. I found Granite Chief and Emigrant good peaks to ski in the morning, as their runs were more sheltered than Squaw Peak's. They were also a bit more woodsy, reminding me somewhat of Whistler's Blue chair. In fact, I think the Granite Chief lift line looked somewhat similar to the Blue chair's. The stuff between Emigrant and Squaw Peak was mainly composed of bunny hills situated close to the ski school. On the second day we skied the Shirley Lake Express, then Solitude (which was empty!), then Granite Chief, before an early lunch at the ski school. On a typical day, I'd probably consider skiing all the way down to the gondola before skiing Squaw Peak, thus making our way from peak to peak, right to left on the map.

Just like at Telluride a couple of years ago, we got pretty lucky with the crowds: Squaw was fairly empty. At one point we had the gondola all to ourselves. Except for a couple of brief points during each of our two days, the weather was very good (mostly sunny). They sky was fully overcast for only two brief moments, making visibility rather flat. But beyond that it was sunny and warm. Maybe that was the problem: in the day the sun would soften up the snow, only for it to freeze overnight. This would create somewhat icy conditions. Not the best snow I've skiied, but the terrain and lack of crowds more than made up for it. As did the views. Lake Tahoe was clearly visible from the top. From the bottom, we got a nice view of the mountain and the cable car, reminiscent of Grouse Mountain's.

This year marks a couple of firsts for us.

1. Since we were skiing only two days we decided to rent equipment instead of hauling our own. This worked out quite well. Similar to the time when my brother took me skiing at Big Bear, I opted for the performance package and got a pair of Volkls. Although I used to ski on a pair of straight 207s, they put me on a pair of 177 AC40 Unlimited Carbon shape skis. They seemed rather short, but afforded a fairly aggressive (for me) stance: I felt the skiis performed better when I really leaned far forward over the front of the bindings. Renting equipment, although more expensive than bringing your own, frees you from having to lug heavy gear around, and gives you an opportunity to try the latest and greatest. So it has its advantages. I think we might do it again when we next go skiing (Spring Break '09 perhaps?).
2. The other new thing for me was the use of the iPod Shuffle, generation 2. Look closely at the pic in the gondola: see that little silver postage-sized button I'm wearing on my left front pocket? That's it! Gone (for good!) are the days of the oversized, heavy tape walkman that we had to have a special harness designed for. The shuffle weighs next to nothing, clips nicely, and if worn externally has pretty simple controls for pausing playback. It even survived a wipeout when I dumped it at the end of the second day. And with 1 GB capacity (and they just came out with a 2 GB model), no more changing tapes! Not to mention that I have a much larger playlist than the 30 or so songs that a tape would hold. I really liked having this little bitty piece of equipment this year.

As with all good things, this year's ski outing had to come to an end. Two days was a little short; I think a good length would be four days skiing with a day's break in the middle. On the way home we lucked out and got bumped up into first class for the leg from Reno to Houston. A very pleasant flight: those extra-wide seats are really comfy. The food's better as well. The only thing that didn't work very well was the sound. Corey's fiddling with an earphone adapter that one really shouldn't need these days, but this plane still had those old two-pronged headphone jacks. Hopefully we'll get a slightly younger plane when we fly off to Italy in just three short weeks.