S Davis wrote:
I remember living in South Lake Tahoe in the winter of 1983, we got 65” in a 24 hour period and had about 168” in a three day period, we were climbing out second story windows that year. We ended up with over 44 feet of snow that year.
Second ski trip. back in the 80's i belonged to a Southern California ski club. Every year we made a 1 week trip to a major mountain. I was scheduled to go to Tahoe one year but a major storm hit just before we were supposed to go. Local Tahoe news was saying don't come, we are in blizzard conditions. Well since the trip was fully paid in advance and there was no refund, we decided to go anyway.
When we got, we were booked into a hotel on the Nevada side as rates were cheaper. We come to find out that the main gas line into the Nevada side broke under the river and there was no gas for heat. The hotel rebooked us to a hotel on the California side. OK, that's good, but when we got there we found out that an avalanche had wiped out major transmission towers on the CA side so electric was very limited.
When you went by the casinos, none of their Marquees were lit up. If you went inside, 80% of the tables were covered and the rest had few patrons. We then found out that you could go to any of the night club show by just showing up and there was no fee. Woo Hoo!
The next day we hit the slopes. There were no lines at any lift because the smart people stayed home. All the lifts we being run on generators so they only ran at about 1/2 speed.
Next the fun part. The snow was so deep that they had to dig out the loading station and dig a trench under the chairs until they were high enough to get above the snow. Same thing at the unloading station. In addition, they had to dig out around each of the towers all the way down to ground level. In some places it could have been 20'. I guess OSHA wasn't there. I'm guessing that they did not want the snow putting pressure on the towers.
Now the best news... we skied fresh powder all week just off the runs which they had groomed.
Now the final part of this story. I was skiing the powder behind a couple of other guys from the club when i skied behind a pine tree. It was the leeward side of the tree and the powder was absolutely loose. I immediately sunk up to my waist and was stuck with no one behind me. After a couple of minutes I managed to dig down until i was able to release my skies with my poles. Then dig down again to recover my skies. I tried putting my skies back on but in the powder i couldn't get it done.
So then I laid my skies down side by side, crawled up on them prone and "surfed" out of the powder until i could get to the groomed snow.
Best ski trip i ever had.
RVing since 1995.
