October 4th, 2009
Early Fall Turns at Heavenly
Joe, Todd
One week ago the temperatures were flirting with record highs in Tahoe and the calendar still said September. Then today we received a surprisingly healthy snow storm on the south shore and the calendar now says October. It snowed enough to squash our bike riding plans for the day, but was it enough to ski on? Sure enough the lake effect off Tahoe loaded up the Nevada side of Heavenly with a worthwhile base. So Todd and I motored up to Stagecoach and followed the skin track of another fanatic and found lotsa nice powder turns from the top of Comet on down (with relatively few base shots). I believe these are the earliest real turns I've ever had!
Sophie was excited about the new snow on the back deck in the morning:
I apologize for the lousy picture quality. I forgot my real camera and had to use my crackberry phone camera.
We chatted briefly with the trail blazer who punched in the track on his way back down. Looked like he enjoyed his day in the mountains too:
The skies started unloading on us once again when we were near the top of the North Bowl chair. And it never stopped until the evening.
Just below the top of the Comet chair it was time to make the first turns of the year. Cautious, but boisterous, they were:
Coach Mac digging on the October pow:
Many good turns were had from top of Comet down to Stagecoach. And it felt like we were in the teeth of winter back in the parking lot:
Great time out there. I highly doubt this is the real start to winter.....if it is we are in trouble on our roofless construction projects....but it was an amazing change of pace from the mild October norm.