Zero to 80 and Counting
Posted on Friday, December 26th, 2008
We keep telling ourselves to stop, but we can’t.
We’re in the middle of one of those great powder cycles, 80+ inches in 10 days, with another three to four feet hitting in the next two, and all we can do is keep getting out there, tell ourselves that it’s OK, that we must, for it’s going to end. It’s so damn good.
Friday, December 12, Tahoe was pretty much dry as a bone, hills bare except for the lingering north facing remnants of the early November storms. We were getting desperate, trying to adopt a Zen-like approach to it all, which anyone who’s been through the drought at start-up knows about. The waiting, the wondering, the stories of the time it wasn’t really skiable until Valentine’s Day. You worry, but tell yourself it’s just skiing, that the climbing and riding are still great, try to push down the obvious anxiety of the likely upcoming dry year.
In early December, though, the long range forecasts came in fairly aggressive: an open storm cycle until the New Year, two weeks of potential storms. And just like that, winter was on. By Monday Dec 15, we were skiing waist deep powder. The systems drove through: eight inches, eight inches, a foot, 10 inches, eight inches of incredible four percent snow — ultra-light powder Tahoe typically doesn’t get.
Backyards and hills started to fill up. Lines looked doable. We started exploring the early-season spots, which impressed and skied great, despite the core shot here and there. It was worth it. The snow was surprisingly good for this early in the season. You’d come back from a day out and kept talking about how great the skiing was. And then we got another 40+ inches in five days, and things turned to a different level, more aggressive lines, longer all-day tours, lots of vertical, with surprisingly few rocks and land mines, and just incredible Rocky Mountain-like snow without the instability. It was great. Someone had pushed the button, and we literally went to sleep in fall and woke up in full-on winter.
While the landscape had adjusted just fine, the lines and stashes filling in quickly, it took a little longer to dive headfirst mentally into this powder cycle. We actually did have the benefit of a longer biking and climbing season, so our bodies adapted fairly well. It was the adjustment to blowing everything off that was hard!
With snow this good, this light, especially when you know you don’t typically get this much good, light, deep powder, you have to keep on skiing. It’s an obligation. At the beginning, you don’t know when it’s going to end. You ski and ski and ski, try to fit in work and grocery shopping, keeping the house and driveway dug out, the skis repaired and the gear ready. But you fail.
Not quite yet in full blow-off mode, you attempt to keep up with these responsibilities; as the cycle continues, however, they quickly fall to the wayside. The cycle has no end in sight. You give in. You pass out early and wake up early, tour, ski the resort, push more vertical, forget to buy milk. Again. Then repeat. And all the while, despite the creeping guilt, you keep checking the forecasts and maps, wondering how long it will last. It has to end. But no time soon. How far can you push it? Thirteen days in a row? 15? 20?
Tahoe typically gets a great cycle like this once every few years, a two to three week stretch where it just doesn’t stop, with a few really good storms thrown in for extra deep days. When it happens mid- to late-season, you’ve already made the switch to ski-mode, it’s ingrained. Blowing off the world is somehow easier. But when you start Day One with a long cycle, it can take you by surprise.
On one of the great days at Squaw this week, I was riding up KT with an older local and a couple of other guys. One guy was sporting some coveted new boards; another had his rock skis on and said he was waiting for a few more feet before he got out on his new boards. The older local guy just shook his head and said, “Don’t wait, just ski ‘em. This might be your last day. Just ski ‘em while you can.”
And while it boarders on cliché, you need to figure it out, juggle it all as best you can, because the forecast will come in with high pressure and the powder cycle will shut down, the run will end and the snow won’t come, and you’ll be bummed you didn’t get after it.
Chris Crossen blogs on RealDeepSnow.com.
