Hi,

Spent this past Saturday and Sunday in the Lake Tahoe region. Started the weekend by meeting up with my friends Damon and Sondra - I skied a lot with Damon back in my grad school days and Sondra is a former instructor at Taos who had a summer job working at the national lab where I was formerly employed.

In the week leading up to the trip I was a little worried about the conditions that i would encounter. I knew that the Tahoe region has received a ton of snow this year, but I also knew that the last few days before my trip were fairly warm. Coverage wouldn't be a problem, of course, but what sort of snow would I find? Turns out that I needn't have worried. Saturday at Alpine Meadows was pretty warm, but the snow in the Sherwood Bowls was well sheltered and sugary. And Alpine is a really nice area, with a lot of good steeps. You really didn't have to look for steeps at Alpine, they would find you! We ended the day with a run down the softer spring snow of Scott Chute - snow wasn't as good here but it was still all good.

Next day we decided to hit Sugarbowl, on the other side of the Donner Pass. It was just Damon and me this time, since Sondra was unable to go. As we got on I-80 heading west to Sugarbowl it started snowing and didn't stop all day. Conditions were just fantastic and just got better and better as the day progressed. High winds and low visibility at the top kept most people inside, but once you took a couple turns off the top the wind wasn't a problem and visibility was fine. By the end of the day we were skiing knee-deep powder. We mostly rode the blacks off of skiers left of the Mt. Disney express and the blacks/double blacks under the Mt. Lincoln lift. Overall I would say sugarbowl is less steep that Alpine, but it is a good mountain, no doubt about that. One drawback to the resort is that there seem to be a few areas near the bottom where things really flatten out and you have to do a fair bit of polling/skating, but no doubt this was somewhat accentuated by the FREAKIN' TON OF SNOW! Woo-hoo!

Ok, sorry about that, lost control of myslef there for a second. Anyway to sum up: Great weekend, one day of great spring skiing, one fantastic powder day!