Saturday (April 6th, 2019) at lake Tahoe did not start well: the sky was cloudy, the wind was strong. Half of the mountains at Heavenly ski resort was on wind hold! We could not take gondola to get to the Nevada's side of the mountain (the better, higher part!), had to take shuttle go to California side of ski resort at California lodge.
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| Heavenly ski resort crosses Nevada/California State line (lower left half is California side), with Nevada side has more ski trails and higher mountain peak. The bright red lines with numbers were my runs on the mountain late that afternoon from 3:30pm to 4:30 pm right to the time the mountain was closed for skiing |
The skiing surface condition at California lodge was good. There was plenty of snow! Upper mountain actually had 2 inch fresh snow from the previous night!
The Heavenly ski resort's base at California lodge has relatively low altitude - 6565ft! The upper mountains are served by lifts at 8550 ft. As the lower mountain has either "green" trail or "black" or "double black" trails, we took the lift gun barrel express to climb to the mid mountain lift. We started on first run from the top of powder bowel express, and a couple more runs on the "blue" trails - I felt great, and enjoyed the thrill of high speed, my max downward ~ 30 mph! Justin suggested that we try the expert level "black" trail "water fall" - which is a short steep trail. I had no problem skied down, but I did not gain the speed due to fear of falling.
Sky started to clear up near noon time, and the crowd started to form at the Canyon express lift. The beauty of the mountain and the lake started to show. I slowed down skiing, and started to take many photos of the mountain and the lake.
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| Justin on the slope with lake Tahoe in the background, under low clouds |
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| a weather system was moving through |
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| there were not too many people at the canyon express, despite the fact the sky express, the lift to the highest peak at ski resort, which is next to it, was lcosed |
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| The clouds moved out fast and broke, the beauty of skiing on Heavenly was a reality now - I could see the lake and its surrounding mountain on almost any trails at Heavenly. |
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| Near noon time, the lines got a lot longer, and wait time for lifts was about 10-15 minutes, longer than a typical run downhill, which was typically 5 -10 minutes. The trails could be pretty long if we skied from top of of canyon express to the base at California lodge, 2700 feet vertical drop, 2.5 miles distance |
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| We stopped at the top of lower gun barrel to have a few pictures before going to lunch. I skied down through run about, Justin skied down the double diamond gun barrel trail |
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| For the last run of the day, we went to the top of canyon express, the highest point we could reach that day and skied all the way to the base via ridge run and mombo to reach the lift Groove - which serves the double diamond trails the face and gun barrel, Justin took these two trails to the base, I used the lift and then took the advanced round-about (skiing in the wood on a narrow chute!). I reached the base a few minutes ahead of Justin. The double diamond trails he took, were hard to ski on. This picture showed the lower gun barrel - the 2D photo did not reflect how steep the slop is! |
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| View of gun barrel trail from the base |
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| The hub on the top of the mountain is the top of of sky express lift, the highest point on the California side of the resort. It was closed due to wind (or was it due to low volume of the crowd?) |
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| Blue sky, white snow and green pin trees always form a beautiful tapestry |
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| There had been clouds over the lake all day long. I prayed for a clear day for next day - and forecast showed that it would be. We looked forward to skiing on Nevada side of the mountain at Heavenly. |
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