I just spent the last few days staying with some friends in Reno, NV. Now, my intent was to spend about a week skiing in the Lake Tahoe area. Those of you who don’t live in the Western US (and who aren’t weather-obsessed skiers) might not be aware, but everything on the West coast is running way, WAY under the normal amount of snowfall this winter.
This fancy weather infographic even shows it:
Ooooooooh.
(For skiing, red = bad, green = okay, dark blue/purple = good)
Normally the Tahoe area during ski season looks something like this:
Okay, got it? Good. That’s a photo from the Northstar ski area. Careful observation will show that there is a lot of snow in the picture.
Right now Northstar-At-Tahoe looks like this:
Very pretty, but lacking in snow. I’d say about 2/3 of the ski area is closed.
Now, the good news is that Northstar actually has snowmaking and a grooming crew that would be right at home at one of those Eastern mountains that doesn’t get any snow:
So there were at least a few trails that were workable. The other problem is that it was about FIFTY DEGREES at the base there, with Reno and most of the region getting close to record highs for late January.
So that was too depressing. I was supposed to stay in Reno until this Friday and then travel to Salt Lake City, but I had to get out of there. So I drove from Reno to Salt Lake, which was… boring. Like really, really boring. Except the part where the crosswinds threatened to blow my car off the highway.
The good news is that there was actually some snow forecast in SLC, and the EpicSki Gathering crew is arriving there next week (http://www.epicski.com/t/119773/utah-gathering-2014-set-for-2-7-feb-2014). So look forward to upcoming exciting reports on all that next week.
The Ski Geek 