“Hip deep.” “Super deep.” “Too Deep?!”

Posted by Big Al on December 8, 2009 under The Weekly Deal | Read the First Comment

FRIDAY AM. UPDATE: It’s snowing again. National Weather Service is predicting snow for a little while today then a good storm rolling in late tonight and dumping through Sunday morning – looks like a storm day Sat then a potentially deep one on Sun….

THE LAST WEEK RECAP: You know those days that start on KT when the snow is so deep you have to straightline just about everything to maintain speed? Then you remind yourself that this is just the tip of the iceberg as far as Squaw’s quantity of terrain goes – oh yeah, and the rest of the ski area is higher-elevation and could have even more snow? Well this week has been the early-season version of this phenomenon.

The first major storm of the season arrived in a fashion very unlike the people who live here – it was ahead of schedule and it was cold. Sunday afternoon saw a decent amount of mayhem on Rte. 80 but everyone who made it up (or who never left town in the first place) was rewarded with a ridiculous amount of snow on Red Dog for Monday morning. Snowboarders, yes snowboarders, were saying that it was borderline ‘too deep.’ Although I think that phrase is silly I can see the point that’s being made. My feeling is that if you are in snow that’s too deep then you’ve got one or two problems: 1) you don’t know where you are; 2) your gear stinks!

This was a cold, slop-less storm that brought us almost three feet on the hill. On Tuesday you could still venture to the sides of Red Dog, or especially the traversing groomer under KT, and get into some very deep pockets. The more speed was the merrier as you tried to embarrass yourself in front of spouse or buddy while hauling into plunge-able pillows. It was a blast! Red Dog opened more terrain – let’s call it the side-country because it was in its natural state but it was safe to ride given the new depth. A few people I talked to said they actually had more fun on Tuesday (leftovers) than Monday (freshies) because they could get up to more speed and still get pow stashes just by feeling around the hill; ie. mountain knowledge wasn’t key because you could just cruise around and see where it was deepest.

Oh, and in reference to the blog post below this one, “The Flow” is on for the Pacific and that’s good for people like us who ski in this ocean maritime climate, i.e. at Squaw! The “Quicksilver in Memory of Eddie Aikau” surf contest can only be held on Hawaii in waves over 30’ and because of that it has only ‘gone’ eight times since its inception in 1985. Well it happened today with 40-footers rolling into Waimea Bay. It has an annual four-month window to take place and  just one week into that allotted time Mama Ocean decided to punch out the entire window and let it rip! Translation: get your boards ready and set the GPS for Olympic Valley, Ca. because the Pacific is tossing and that does good things for our snow.

RECAP: “In The Mood” at the Resort last Th. was awesome. Organizer Rob Frohlich (”Fro”) inspired the whole crowd for just being there despite Stage 4 cancer. Points North Heli owner Kevin Quinn was supposed to give away one heli day but because of a story about Fro recently skinning and skiing an Alaskan peak three times Quinn said, “my wife (Jessica Sobolowski-Quinn) is going to kill  me but I’m going to give away THREE heli days!” The unthinkable happened when the first name drawn didn’t show to collect his prize. Three other lucky souls were handed the privilege including Squaw legend Craig Beck. Beck had in turn given away a pair of hand-made longboards for the auction which benefited the Tahoe Forest Cancer Center. It was a hoot and for a lot of us the A/V highlight was  the opening segment with amazing Tom Day time-lapse footage set to the Grateful Dead’s “Here Comes Sunshine” jam….the whole night was very Squaw and very fun.