Blog of Bermanism

This past President’s day weekend marked the 7th annual Skiing Addicts Anonymous ski trip. For the first time since the ski trip’s inception, we did not go to Winter Park, Colorado. There were a lot of reasons for this (time away from work, expense, Rachel is 8 months pregnant), but, mainly it was because the group wanted to try something different. Winter Park remains one of my favorite places to ski in the world, but it is a big world and there are a whole lot of other places for us to explore. So, mostly out of convenience, we ventured to Lake Tahoe this year for the ski trip. I’ve been there a few times, but have never really skied the big, legendary ski resorts. So, with the help of my cousin Adam and the enormous generosity of his best friend’s family, we procured a cabin right on Lake Tahoe, striking distance from many of Lake Tahoe’s best ski resorts.

Sadly, the vast majority of the usual suspects couldn’t come on the trip this year. But, the people that did come made for an absolutely fantastic group. My trusty skiing sidekick and one of my closest friends, Chris, can always be relied upon to come on the ski trip, and he didn’t disappoint this year. He enthusiastically flew in from Portland to foray into the unknown lands of the Lake Tahoe ski areas. The rest of the people on the trip were from the Bay Area. Rachel came along for the first time since 2002 (and it was great to have her there), my cousin Adam was there, my closest bay area friend, Ken (who rows with me) and his girlfriend Kelly came along, and our rowing friends, Allison and Trent, joined the herd. Trent and Allison largely did their own thing skiing-wise; they both took snowboarding lessons and joined us for breakfast and for dinner every night. Kelly and Rachel don’t ski, so they relaxed to the insanely beautiful view of the lake from the cabin’s picture windows. So, the group that was skiing together was myself, Adam, Ken, and Chris. This combination proved to be a recipe for an effortlessly good time.

We all skied at about the same pace doing about the same level of difficulty of runs. Which made the experience both exhausting and wonderful. We decided that we would ski a different resort every day, a flight of resorts, if you will. We went to Squaw, Northstar and Alpine Meadows. We really enjoyed all three resorts. Squaw had some absolutely amazing terrain and a really neat layout. My favorite part of Squaw was Granite Chief. With great snow conditions, you could spend days exploring the different features a type of terrain back there. Plus, the view from High Camp is hard to beat. The only unfortunate part about Squaw was the quality of the snow. It was icy in the morning and evening and a little slushy otherwise, but that is California skiing for you. Chris and I attempted to ski KT-22 at the end of the day, but it was a solid mass of crusty snow. Chris made the comment that a snowball would have tripped you because it was solidly frozen to the ground. Squaw was great though, and Adam was a great guide through the complicated mountain. I’d love to go back after a big snow storm and check out all of the hidden treasures that the mountain has to offer.

Next, we went to Northstar. Now, the day was Saturday on President’s weekend, so things were a lot more crowded than Friday at Squaw (though I’m sure Squaw was a nightmare as well on Saturday). But, we managed to get to the top and went directly to the backside. We had a blast. The black runs at Northstar are mostly like difficult blue runs everywhere else, except that they’re all at least a mile long. It was a perfect way to spend the morning, so we hung out on the back side and skied as many of the runs over there as possible. The snow was a little better at Northstar than at Squaw, so we really enjoyed tearing it up. We packed our lunches that day and ate outside at some picnic tables at the top of the mountain (it was probably 45 degrees at the top). That was really nice. Then, we headed over to Lookout Mountain, where I had discovered the actually hard runs that are over there. We skied a few of the easier ones, then headed down Stampede. This was a seriously hard run. It was really, really steep at the top and most of the people on the run were on their butts the whole way down. I don’t think people realized how hard it was until they were on it, and then they stuck and had to get down the run. Anyway, it was really fun. Ken made it down the run without getting hurt, which was both impressive and a relief (he tends to get hurt a lot). He then told us that he isn’t doing that kind of run anymore and we all went on to the next run over, which was easier, but still hard. Then we spent the rest of the day doing some screamer runs, and finished up in the terrain park where Chris and I fell on top of each other twice, once on a rail and once in the trees. Oh, I almost forgot. It got so warm in the afternoon that Adam and Chris took off their shirts and were skiing with their jackets open and nothing underneath them for the whole day. It was great, except that Chris ended up with some really nice snow rash from the fall off of the rail.

The last day was spent at Alpine Meadows, which was also a blast. We had the honor of being joined by Kelly’s friend, Shannon for the day. She totally kept up with us, so the dynamic stayed the same, and it was fun to have a girl along. None of us had had much experience with Alpine, so we were all flying in the dark. But, it turned out to have some really interesting terrain and some really hard stuff to ski. I loved the layout and we really made the most of the day there. We explored as many parts of the mountain as possible, including the backside (which involved hiking a good 1/2 mile from the top of the mountain to the high traverse). Unfortunately, Sun Bowl on the backside was a slush puddle because that day was even warmer than at Northstar. So we waterskied down and got off of the backside, back to the better snow. I think one of our favorite runs at Alpine was Wolverine bowl, which was a double-black diamond. It wasn’t actually that hard, just steep. You could get up some serious speed down that run, and it was a real blast. Alpine also had a lot of mogul runs, which made me happy, except that the snow was really carved out, the moguls were the size of four of me, and the snow was running really fast, so I had a hard time skiing them. For the piste de resistance, Chris did his yearly naked run for the last run of the ski trip. This year, though, I had vowed to do it with him. So, we got to the top of the lift that let out most of the way to the top, skied out into the sun, stripped down to our skivvies, stuffed our clothes into our backpacks and skied all the way to the bottom in nothing but our underwear with Adam following behind us with the video camera. I’ve gotta say, this was a much more liberating experience than I expected and I got a real adrenaline rush from it. I wasn’t very cold at all (and the sun had gone down at this point and things had really cooled down). Plus the comments, looks, and people’s general reaction to Chris and I doing this crazy thing were genuinely amusing. This one woman stopped us on the mountain so that she could take our picture. And, we had a following of young snowboarders who had made it their sole purpose to make us fall. When we didn’t fall, they started throwing snow balls at us. We just took it in stride and went along with it. We got to the base and walked out the car still stripped down. I’m sure all of the parents of all of the young children really appreciated it, but we didn’t care. It was really fun and I’ll certainly do it again next year. Unfortunately, I think the experience pushed me over the edge with getting a really crappy cold that I still have the tail end of after two weeks. But, I’d do it all again.

Anyway, this post has gotten long enough, but it was such an amazing ski trip this year, especially being able to come home to Rachel and Kelly and Izzy and just relaxing and enjoying some seriously great company. I’m not sure what we’ll do next year, especially since we’ll have a 10 month old baby on our hands, but we’ll probably do something. This year was effortless, it just worked, everyone was happy, and we all went home feeling like our skiing itch had been well scratched. So, until next year.

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