Skiing Tahoe

We spent this past weekend up at Lake Tahoe, getting in one more ski session this winter.  

We drove up with our friends on Saturday morning.  It was beautiful scenery, and we were driving through snow for the last half hour.  We arrived at Sierra at Tahoe just as the lifts were opening, and the bit of fresh snow made for good conditions.  Horsetail was our favorite run of the day.

When the lifts closed that afternoon, we packed up and drove down towards the lake, to the Lakeshore Lodge and Spa.  We promptly took beers, chips & salsa down to the hot tub right on the beach.

Sitting in the 100 degree water when it's 30 degrees above the surface is such a weird feeling!  It's also funny to see snow on the beach (the girl in the photo above was sledding on the snow, on the beach!)

Here we watched the sunset and relaxed until we got hungry.

For dinner, we wandered to MacDuff's Irish Pub near our hotel.  This spot received high marks from all of us--it was the perfect way to end a ski day.

Our second day we skied at Kirkwood, which is an awesome mountain--it definitely became one of our favorites!  Unfortunately, on our second lift of the day, the chair lift faulted and lost power when we were almost to the top.  Four of us sat about 20 feet from the unloading area, swinging in the wind, which had picked up significantly from earlier that morning.  The chair lift started and stopped seven different times, each time inching us a foot closer to the unloading ramp before faulting again.

Our jokes about jumping off the lift early turned more serious as the lift showed no signs of starting up again.  My fingers and toes were completely numb by this point.  Finally after 25 minutes of being nearly blown off the chair, we had inched close enough to the unloading ramp that we decided to jump off.  Ski patrol arrived right as we made the jump--definitely the most "exciting" event of the day.

Since the trail had completely cleared off during the time the lift was inoperable, we enjoyed a perfectly empty run to ourselves.

By the end of the weekend, we had built up to more challenging trails with views (and signs!) like this:

I finished the afternoon with two back to back runs on a trail that was like a mini version of a half pipe--I think it was my favorite ski run ever.
It was a great way to close out the Winter ski season.  I will be looking forward to future skiing adventures after such a fun couple of experiences this year.