For days I'd been closely watching weather forecast information for the storm set to arrive Sunday late afternoon, that was going to be my last good fresh powder skiing day at resorts this season. Thus Sunday late morning under partly cloudy skies began my 4 hour drive up to South Lake Tahoe in order to stay overnight at Stateline and then be on the gondola at 8:30am Monday, April 16, 2018 when it opened a half hour early for season pass holders. Sleeping in the back of my Forester watched the storm at 6300 feet change from rain to snow at 8pm and snow hard till a bit after midnight. At 7am drove to the Harvey's Casino back parking lot to park and found a good 7 inches cold fresh about and then read the same posted at the Heavenly web site as well as seeing same on the Sky Chair snow plot. Temperature was 26F with heavy snow squalls. Riding up on the Gondola at 8:35am without any line, weather became windier with poor visibility cloud and moderately heavy snow up at 8.5k. Since I would be skiing just the one day of fresh snow, only brought my fat Rossignol S7 skis. With the back side of the storm putting snow down below 3k, this was excellent light mid winter dry powdery snow one rarely sees a depth of in April. Note with light flat, low contrast, and often snowy, using the red dots to help see my tracks in below images.
At the top went up Tamarack lift and then unwisely took California Trail back down to lift that had been groomed leaving little on sides. Note all the upper California side was closed. Back up Tamarack went into Aries Woods where snowboards had already made lots of angle traverses unnecessarily mutilating much of that slope. With Comet Express now closed for the season, took Dipper Express, then traversed across the road cut just below the top of Comet Express that would be my primary plan the rest of the morning. With that lift closed expected untracked in those areas would last longest which was the case. From there took Crossover Road to Olympic Express only to be surprised that those coming up on Stagecoach had already tracked out the area. Instead of at least one really long powder bouncer had thus far only gotten short sections of less than a couple dozen turns.
Thus chose to work the obscure rib between Cloud 9 and Crossover road where at 9:50am I put down the above tracks down to the road.
Then skied along the road to the saddle where at 9:51am a nice open bowl I call "Crossover Saddle Bowl" was untracked at 9:51am. Then skied down to the marked X viewpoint to snag the below image:
After that pleasure traversed skiers right then worked small sections in the thin base including this section at 9:54am. Average depth of new snow in this area seemed 10 to 12 inches.
Back up on Dipper Express then back out on Crossover Road, there was still much untracked below the road. In general after open areas are tracked, I look for dense forest and areas below obstacles like rock bands and steeps that block lines from above. Because most skiers maintain high speed on the road to reach the saddle to go down to Olympic Express, they don't notice the untracked just below the road. The view below from Crossover Road at 10:16am before I bounced down through the pines.
Below the above view the convex slopes drops off steeply and continues quite a ways. This is where I popped out at Pepi's, the lower traverse road from Stagecoach lift to East Peak lifts. Deeper snow in there.
Back up a couple times on Dipper Express then at 10:37am bounced this slope near the beginning of Crossover Road just beyond the banner. Although these images show 2 hours after lift opening lots of still untracked, such was not in fact the general situation over most of the Nevada slopes but rather with Comet Express not running, it was awkward to reach these slopes.
I took a run down Orion then out in Nova woods and back up. Indeed most of these areas were all tracked. And at 11:03am yet another beautiful tree line off Crossover Road.
And back up again at 11:20am from near the start of Crossover Road just beyond the banner.
Continued skiing diminishing patches of untracked for another hour before calling it a day. Total of 12 lift rides with many of my better tracks not shown above simply because I didn't always stop mid run to take an image nor do many lines have open for camera views. The best was over for me on this final fresh snow day of resort skiing this season. A great way to end my season.
With Heavenly closing the following weekend and new DayMaker Chromemaker binding adapters being shipped, any more skiing this season would be in the backcountry up at Carson Pass. By 1:30pm I was driving west back down US50 and would then drive north to North Table Mountain Ecological Reserve near Oroville to work wildflower images on Tuesday before driving back home.
At the top went up Tamarack lift and then unwisely took California Trail back down to lift that had been groomed leaving little on sides. Note all the upper California side was closed. Back up Tamarack went into Aries Woods where snowboards had already made lots of angle traverses unnecessarily mutilating much of that slope. With Comet Express now closed for the season, took Dipper Express, then traversed across the road cut just below the top of Comet Express that would be my primary plan the rest of the morning. With that lift closed expected untracked in those areas would last longest which was the case. From there took Crossover Road to Olympic Express only to be surprised that those coming up on Stagecoach had already tracked out the area. Instead of at least one really long powder bouncer had thus far only gotten short sections of less than a couple dozen turns.
Thus chose to work the obscure rib between Cloud 9 and Crossover road where at 9:50am I put down the above tracks down to the road.
Then skied along the road to the saddle where at 9:51am a nice open bowl I call "Crossover Saddle Bowl" was untracked at 9:51am. Then skied down to the marked X viewpoint to snag the below image:
After that pleasure traversed skiers right then worked small sections in the thin base including this section at 9:54am. Average depth of new snow in this area seemed 10 to 12 inches.
Back up on Dipper Express then back out on Crossover Road, there was still much untracked below the road. In general after open areas are tracked, I look for dense forest and areas below obstacles like rock bands and steeps that block lines from above. Because most skiers maintain high speed on the road to reach the saddle to go down to Olympic Express, they don't notice the untracked just below the road. The view below from Crossover Road at 10:16am before I bounced down through the pines.
Below the above view the convex slopes drops off steeply and continues quite a ways. This is where I popped out at Pepi's, the lower traverse road from Stagecoach lift to East Peak lifts. Deeper snow in there.
Back up a couple times on Dipper Express then at 10:37am bounced this slope near the beginning of Crossover Road just beyond the banner. Although these images show 2 hours after lift opening lots of still untracked, such was not in fact the general situation over most of the Nevada slopes but rather with Comet Express not running, it was awkward to reach these slopes.
I took a run down Orion then out in Nova woods and back up. Indeed most of these areas were all tracked. And at 11:03am yet another beautiful tree line off Crossover Road.
And back up again at 11:20am from near the start of Crossover Road just beyond the banner.
Continued skiing diminishing patches of untracked for another hour before calling it a day. Total of 12 lift rides with many of my better tracks not shown above simply because I didn't always stop mid run to take an image nor do many lines have open for camera views. The best was over for me on this final fresh snow day of resort skiing this season. A great way to end my season.
With Heavenly closing the following weekend and new DayMaker Chromemaker binding adapters being shipped, any more skiing this season would be in the backcountry up at Carson Pass. By 1:30pm I was driving west back down US50 and would then drive north to North Table Mountain Ecological Reserve near Oroville to work wildflower images on Tuesday before driving back home.
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