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We decided a few months ago to take a family trip to Tahoe this winter; the fact that I live only a few hours away makes it a really convenient holiday destination. Alec, Mom and Dad flew into San Francisco late on Thursday, and Friday morning we drove up to the mountains. The weather was unbelievably good all weekend, with clear skies and moderate temperatures. I did not need the snow chains I bought, which is good because they look about as easy to put on as a straightjacket on a 400 pound epileptic.

We arrive at the cabin and instantly know that no one has rented it since the last big storm a few weeks ago. This is because there is three feet of snow on the boardwalk leading to the front door. Rather than climb over it with all of our luggage, we decide to shovel it off, which it easier than it looks. Once again, I am thankful that I don’t live in a place where shoveling snow is a normal activity (sorry, Josh). The cabin is fantastic; it’s decorated in the theme of a firehouse (though lacking the one thing that would have made it perfect: a pole from the loft to the kitchen). Art and Mary join us from Fresno, and we have a huge dinner with lots of alcohol. Since everyone but me is on east coast time, and since I can sleep anywhere at any time of day, we make it an early night.

The next day we get up early and head to the slopes. Heavenly’s Boulder Lodge is less than a mile away, and it’s not too busy when we get there. Alec goes off to join a class on snowboarding (since he’s never tried it before), and my dad and I hit the slopes. The run at the bottom of Boulder is a green, but still really fun. It takes a few runs to get any amount of control over my skis, but eventually my skills from 13 years ago come back to me. By the end of the day we are even hitting a few of the blue runs, though that was riding the extreme edge of my ability. My dad was keeping up with me, but my mom called it a day after a long run. Alec was even able to do a run after his class, with a fair amount of control. The slopes close at 4:00pm, so we head back to the cabin for lasagna and a movie (Die Hard was on AMC; I’d forgotten just how good an action movie it was).

The next day was even better. The weather was sunny and clear, with the temperature in the low 40s. We do green runs for most of the day, and I hit the occasional blue, though I had a pretty tough time with them. At the end of the day we head back to the cabin, exhausted, and pack for the trip home. The fam flies out of SF in the early afternoon, so we had to leave Tahoe at 8:00am. Overall it was a great trip, with absolutely nothing going wrong. Considering the potential for bad weather, traffic jams and skiing injuries that the area has, that’s pretty amazing. Photos of the whole weekend are up, all of which were taken by either Alec or Mom.

I went back to Tahoe this weekend with a few guys from work and had the complete opposite experience. The slopes at Squaw Valley were pretty tough, and the powder was impossible to move in. After the first three runs, I was completely exhausted. The weather turned bad around lunch, with the snow really coming down. That, combined with the wind, made it seem like you were being sandblasted. Visibilty was zero, which did not exactly improve my meager skills. The drive home sucked, since we had to go 30 mph and avoid tons of people putting on or taking off chains. It was still fun, but today I feel like I was at the receiving end of beating with a bag of doorknobs; everything is sore.