Podcasts about tahoe donner

“Snow is blissful, it's pure, it's white, it's serene, it's a siren call. But it's also very dark, it's death. The darkest white is the perfect analogy for an avalanche,” said New York Times bestselling author Eric Blehm on Episode 35 about his latest book, The Darkest White, chronicling the life and untimely passing of legendary snowboarder Craig Kelly. Widely regarded as the Michael Jordan of snowboarding, Kelly was a pioneer in this uniquely American sport, and in his book, Blehm dives deep in to Kelly's life and his pivotal role in the history of snowboarding and splitboarding. Blehm also goes into remarkable detail about the 2003 La Traviata avalanche in the Selkirk Mountains of British Columbia, Canada, where Kelly and six other skiers lost their lives, including Truckee local Kathy Kessler. Our chat with Blehm covers a bit of the history here in Lake Tahoe, a bit about Kelly and an insightful discussion around the human factors involved in the tragic avalanche. Learn more about Blehm and purchase his award-winning non-fiction books at ericblehm.com. 2:30 – Recording from Jim and Bonnie Zellers garage in Tahoe Donner.3:50 – Introducing Eric Blehm, author of Fearless, The Only Thing Worth Dying For, The Last Season and his new book, The Darkest White, about the history of snowboarding, Craig Kelly and the La Traviata avalanche.7:20 – Kathy Kessler – a core lord in Truckee who lost her life in the La Traviata avalanche with Craig Kelly.9:10 – The roots of snowboarding were on Donner Summit – Donner Ski Ranch, Soda Springs and Boreal. 10:10 – Mind the Track Superfan #1 – Scott Kessler. Thanks for the shout out buddy!13:15 – Eric was a snowboard magazine editor at TransWorld when he met Jim and Bonnie Zellers, the original backcountry snowboarders for The North Face. 15:30 – Transitioning from being a short-form magazine editor to a long-form book author and investigative journalist.22:06 – Learning about the formation of the Mount Baker Hard Core, the lawsuit between Burton and Sims over Craig Kelly.23:00 – Tom Sims claimed to have invented the snowboard before Sherman Poppen, but it was never confirmed.25:00 – Mount Baker, Donner Ski Ranch, Boreal and Soda Springs were one of the first places to allow snowboards on chairlifts. 30:00 – Parts of Craig's story that were cut from the book – Greg Stump's film Siberia with Kelly and Scott Schmidt. 34:30 -Craig Kelly's unique riding style, his fall line style influenced a generation of riders and convinced Trail Whisperer that he should have been a snowboarder.45:00 – Craig as a pioneer in being one of the first snowboard guides in Canada, pursuing the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides certification.48:00 – Early splitboarding, Eric got a splitboard and infiltrated ski resorts that didn't allow snowboarding, riding the lift in split, then assembling it and snowboarding down as ‘The Chameleon”.1:01:10 – The Durrand Glacier avalanche on La Traviata, the human factor and group dynamics.1:10:30 – Ruedi Beglinger as a lead guide at Selkirk Mountain Experience, a strong character and the changes in the guiding industry and backcountry culture after the avalanche. 1:16:30 – Hubris and its role in the avalanche incident.1:23:00 – Craig Kelly wanted to educate the younger generation on snow safety and the dangers of the backcountry.1:28:30 – If Eric could ask Craig one question, what would it be?1:35:15 – The Darkest White – where did the name come from?1:39:30 – What does Mind the Track mean to you? 1:40:30 – Go to ericblehm.com or @ericblehmofficial on Instagram

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on March 30. It dropped for free subscribers on April 6. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:WhoBridget Legnavsky, President & CEO of Sugar Bowl, CaliforniaRecorded onMarch 13, 2024About Sugar BowlClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: A group of shareholdersLocated in: Donner, CaliforniaYear founded: 1939Pass affiliations: Mountain Collective: 2 days, no blackoutsClosest neighboring ski areas: Donner Ski Ranch (:02), Soda Springs (:07), Boreal (:10), Kingvale (:14), Tahoe Donner (:24), Northstar (:27), Palisades Tahoe (:30), Homewood (:44), Diamond Peak (:52), Mt. Rose (:58), Sky Tavern (1:03) - travel times vary considerably given time of day, time of year, and weather conditions.Base elevation: 6,883 feetSummit elevation: 8,383 feetVertical drop: 1,500 feetSkiable Acres: 1,650 acresAverage annual snowfall: 500 inchesTrail count: 103 (38% advanced, 45% intermediate, 17% beginner)Lift count: 12 (1 four-passenger gondola, 5 high-speed quads, 3 fixed-grip quads, 1 triple, 1 platter, 1 carpet) - view Lift Blog's inventory of Sugar Bowl's lift fleet.View historic Sugar Bowl trailmaps on skimap.org.Why I interviewed herLagnavsky muses, toward the end of our interview, that Lake Tahoe in general is home to “the best skiing I've ever had in my life,” and that she can't fathom why it's not more of a national and international ski destination. This is coming from someone who has spent 30-plus years in the industry; who's worked in Europe, Colorado, and New Zealand; who has freeskier credentials etched on her resume. She knows what she's talking about.And I agree with her. More or less**. Tahoe is spectacular. The views, the snow, the terrain, the vibe, the energy, the variety, the sheer audacity of it all. Sixteen ski areas rung around a 191-square-mile lake at the top of California*^. An improbable wintertime circus, one of the greatest concentrations of ski areas on the continent.And no one would say there is any lack of people there. This is, again, California, home to 39 million Americans. Traffic and housing are big problems. But, being based in the East, I'm dialed into the way that much of the country thinks about Tahoe as a destination ski region. Which is to say, they mostly don't.And I don't quite get why. It's not hard to get to. Reno's airport is closer to the major Tahoe ski areas than Denver's is to Summit County. It's not a huge facility, but it's served by direct flights from 24 airports, including New York City and Chicago. While the roads can get nasty mid-storm, they're mostly well-maintained federal and state highways. There are plenty of accommodations on or near the larger resorts. But anytime I ask an Epic- or Ikon-Pass wielding East Coast city skier where they're going out west, they say the Wasatch or Colorado or Big Sky or Jackson Hole. And if I'm like “what about Tahoe,” they're usually like, “there's skiing in California? How strange.”Not that the Epic and Ikon Tahoe mountains need more skiers. The San Francisco Chronicle ran a story a couple weeks ago about how fed-up Bay Area skiers were jetting to Utah and Colorado to outsmart the crowds (slow clap for that hack, Fellas). But there is a lot more to this sprawling, captivating ski region than Palisades, Heavenly, Northstar, and Kirkwood. And one of the most overlooked but also magical pieces of it is Sugar Bowl. And the fact that it's not, for whatever reason, a destination to anyone outside of a 250-mile radius might make it exactly the kind of place that a lot of you are searching for.**Settle down, Utah.*and Nevada^”Ummmm, the highest point in California is Mt. Whitney, which is nowhere near Lake Tahoe.” Thanks Doesn't-Understand-Intentional-Hyperbole Bro. P.S. I hate you.What we talked about127 inches in one storm and yes that's real; how do you even measure that?; the “storm troopers” living at Sugar Bowl; storm mode in Tahoe; adjustable lifts; this crazy door:A season extension; how late Sugar Bowl could stay open and why it usually shuts down before that; ski New Zealand; Treble Cone; Cardrona; the global seasonal ski resort work cycle; never-summer; the biggest cultural adjustment coming to America after running resorts in New Zealand; who owns Sugar Bowl and how committed they are to independence; “We're an independent resort surrounded by Ikon and Epic, and that's making it really hard for Sugar Bowl to survive”; could Sugar Bowl join the Ikon Pass?; joining Mountain Collective; “part of the beauty of Sugar Bowl is that it's uncrowded”; Shhhhhh-ugar Bowl; the three things that set Sugar Bowl apart in a crowded ski market; operating below comfortable carrying capacity; the village gondola; what happens when you live in a car-free village; considering a gondola upgrade; considering the lift fleet; why the Crow's Peak lift is a triple chair, rather than a high-speed quad; “I do believe we could have the best beginner's experience in the U.S.”; Sugar Bowl's masterplan; village evolution; the curiosity of the small ski areas surrounding Sugar Bowl; “it's got the best skiing I've ever had in my life here”; why isn't California a destination ski market?; yes snowmaking is still helpful in Tahoe, and not just in the winter.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewAs far as mid-to-large-sized ski areas go, Sugar Bowl is about as well placed as any in the world. Its four peaks sit walking distance from Interstate 80, which mainlines Bay Area skiers into the mountains in under three hours (without traffic; yes, I know, there's always traffic). Sugar Bowl is the first big ski area you hit riding east, and arguably the easiest to access. And it gets clobbered with 500 inches of average annual snowfall. Those are Alta-Snowbird numbers (keep moving, Canyon Bro; yes, it's heavier snow, in general; I already told you LCC delivers the best skiing in America, so stop arguing about something we agree on).And yet, skiing circa 2024 has set up a challenging obstacle course for Sugar Bowl to navigate. At least as a business. Legnavsky is frank in the podcast, telling us that, “we're an independent resort surrounded by Ikon and Epic, and that's making it really hard for Sugar Bowl to survive.” To underscore just how fierce competition for skiers is in Lake Tahoe, look how close Sugar Bowl is to Northstar, an Epic resort that is more than twice its size, and Palisades Tahoe, the 6,000-acre Ikon Pass monster just to its south:It's a tough draw. Though not as tough as that of the pass' namesake Donner Party, who spent what would have been the bomber ski winter of 1846-47 snowbound at a nearby lake eating each other (reading the fevered history of this ordeal derailed me for half an hour while writing this article; I will just say that I've never been happier to live in the future). Still, for a business trying to make a go in the U.S. America of 2024, Megapass Monopoly is a tough game to play.So if Sugar Bowl can't beat them, why not join them? The mountain has, after all, already jumped on the Mountain Collective train. Why not just join Ikon and be done with it?The answer, as you can imagine, is nuanced and considered. How does a ski area shape and retain an identity and remain a sustainable business in a vibrant ski region that is stuffed with snow and skiers, but also plenty of larger – and, frankly, less expensive (Sugar Bowl's season pass is $1,099, more than the $982 Epic Pass) – ski areas? That, for now, is Sugar Bowl's biggest challenge.Questions I wish I'd askedSugar Bowl also owns the expansive Royal Gorge cross-country ski center, which they claim is North America's largest, with more than 140 kilometers of trails. And while this trailmap resembles a Rorschach test slide (I see a bat, or maybe a volcano, or maybe a volcanic bat) more than any sort of guide I would be capable of following in and out of the wilderness, I can only assume this is impressive:What I got wrongI lumped Boreal in with Soda Springs, Tahoe Donner, and Donner Ski Ranch as a “small, family-oriented ski area.” That's not really accurate. While Boreal, which, like Soda Springs, is owned by big bad Powdr Corp, is small by Tahoe standards, it's really been transformed into a giant terrain park in line with the company's Woodward Brand. It's the only night-skiing operation in Tahoe, so the Park Brahs can Park Out Brah.Why you should ski Sugar Bowl“Part of the beauty of Sugar Bowl is that it's uncrowded,” Legnavsky tells us in the podcast.I'm sold.To access the best version of modern U.S. skiing, you have to, I believe, find the ski areas with all the attributes of the destination resorts, minus their cost, congestion and Instapost-braggy name recognition. Places like Saddleback (a high-speed lift, lots of snow, great terrain, no people), Loveland (easy access, huge terrain, everyone sitting in their cars on the highway below, waiting to go skiing), or Sundance (modern lifts, great snow and scenery, minus the huge crowds just north; this also happens to be where I'm posted up at the moment, writing this article).Sugar Bowl is one of these places. Five high-speed lifts and craptons of snow, without an access road that looks like the first draft of a caveman rollercoaster. While its 1,500-foot vertical drop ranks ninth among Tahoe ski areas, it clocks in at sixth in skiable acreage, with 1,650. Both numbers, in any context, are respectable, and will give an average skier more than enough to work with for a few days.Vail has sold more Epic Passes every year since 2008. While new mountain acquisitions surely drove much of that growth, the company's last new domestic pickup was Seven Springs and its sister resorts in 2021. That suggests that more Epic Pass holders are visiting the same number of ski areas each winter. I don't know how many Ikon Passes Alterra sells, but no one at Palisades Tahoe is looking around and saying, “Man, Alterra really needs to spread the word about this place.”I get it. The Epic and Ikon Passes are fabulous deals and fantastic products, granting Californians access to the big four Tahoe resorts and destinations far beyond. If you want to put skiing at the center of your winter, it's hard not to buy one or the other or both. But there's a tradeoff for everything. Every year, more people (probably; I'm speculating on Ikon) buy those passes. And every year, those resorts stay more or less the same size (with occasional expansions, like the sizeable expansions at Steamboat, Aspen, and Keystone this winter), implementing chessboard parking plans and building bigger lifts to keep the cauldron just at a boil. But you can turn down the heat yourself. Here's the hack: exit Interstate 80 eastbound at exit 174, Donner Pass Road, drive three miles, park, and ski while everyone else is waiting to cash in their cheap Ikon Passes down highway 89.Podcast NotesOn Cardrona and Treble ConeLegnavsky spent a large chunk of her career running Cardrona and Treble Cone, a pair of large ski areas 40 road miles apart on New Zealand's South Island. Both sit largely above treeline. Treble Cone rises around 2,300 vertical feet:Cardrona's vert is just shy of 2,000 feet on 1,149 acres. While New Zealand is known for “nutcracker” surface lifts, Cardrona runs a legit lift fleet, with a chondola, two high-speed quads, two fixed-grip quads, a platter, and three conveyors:If you do happen onto a nutcracker, here are some tips:On the dense concentration of ski areas around Lake TahoeResetting ye' old Tahoe ski areas inventory:And here's how close Sugar Bowl sits to its four small neighbors – Donner Ski Ranch is right across the street; Soda Springs and Boreal are right up the road; and Tahoe Donner is just a few miles east off Interstate 80:On the Sugar Bowl gondolaSugar Bowl runs what I believe is the last classic four-passenger gondola in the United States (Loon's four-person gondola sports a more modern design):On the old Crow's Peak liftPrior to expanding skier's left into Crow's Nest Peak in 2013, a Heron double chair that was also known as Crow's Nest ran parallel to the Disney chair. Here's the 2012 trailmap:After the new triple chair opened, Sugar Bowl changed the double's name to “Pony Express,” and eventually removed the lift around 2018.On The Art of SkiingWe don't discuss this in the pod, but here's a Disney short from like 1702 or something that shows Goofy crushing it at Sugar Bowl:The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 22/100 in 2024, and number 522 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Dec. 26. It dropped for free subscribers on Jan. 2. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:WhoGreg Gavrilets, General Manager of Mt. Rose, NevadaRecorded onNovember 27, 2023About Mt. RoseView the mountain stats overviewOwned by: The Buser familyLocated in: Incline Village, NevadaYear founded: 1964Pass affiliations: NoneReciprocal partners: NoneClosest neighboring ski areas: Sky Tavern (:03), Diamond Peak (:15), Northstar (:28), Homewood (:44), Palisades Tahoe (:45), Tahoe Donner (:48), Boreal (:49), Donner Ski Ranch (:51), Sugar Bowl (:52), Soda Springs (:53), Heavenly (:56). Travel times vary considerably given weather conditions, time of day, and time of year.Base elevation: 7,900 feet (bottom of Chuter lift)Summit elevation: 9,700 feetVertical drop: 1,800 feetSkiable Acres: 1,200+Average annual snowfall: 350 inchesTrail count: 70+ (10% expert double black, 40% black, 30% intermediate blue, 20% beginner green)Lift count: 8 (2 six-packs, 1 high-speed quad, 2 fixed-grip quads, 1 triple, 1 carpet, 1 “Little Mule”)View historic Mt. Rose trailmaps on skimap.org.Why I interviewed himThere's something so damn dramatic about skiing around Tahoe. The lake, yes, but it's also the Sierra Nevada, heaving and brutal, pitched as though crafted for skiing, evergreens loper-spaced apart. It's the snow, piled like pizza boxes in a hoarder's apartment, ever-higher, too much to count or comprehend (well, some years). It's the density, the always knowing that, like some American Alps, there is always another ski center past the one you're riding and the one you can see from there and the one you can see beyond that.Mt. Rose is one of just three Tahoe ski areas that sits fully on the Nevada side of the lake (the other two are Diamond Peak and Sky Tavern; Heavenly straddles the California-Nevada border). That whole Nevada thing can sap some of the Tahoe mystique. What is Nevada, after all, to most of us, but desert, dry, wide-open, and empty? I once slipped into a hallucinogenic state of borderline psychosis on a 122-degree drive Vegas-bound across Interstate 15. I was dead sober but sleep-deprived and in a truck with no air-conditioning the rippling distances tore my soul into potpourri and scattered it about the alien planet I became convinced I was crossing.But Nevada is a ski state, and Mt. Rose is its finest ski area. As the truest locals' bump on the block, it is a crucial piece of the Tahoe Zeitgeist, the place that tourists don't bother with, and that locals bother with specifically because of that fact.There are a handful of communities in America that count as their home bump a big, thrilling ski area that is not also a major tourist attraction. Bogus Basin, outside of Boise; Mt. Spokane, Washington; Montana Snowbowl, looming over Missoula. Where you can mainline the big-mountain experience sans the enervation of crowds. Mt. Rose is one of those places, a good, big ski area without all the overwhelm we've come to associate with them.What we talked aboutEarly-season openings; assessing the Lakeview chairlift upgrade after year one; why Mt. Rose doesn't operate into May; extending the ski day after Daylight Savings; could night skiing ever work at Mt. Rose?; living through 668 inches of snow; Ober Mountain; the upside of starting your career at a small ski area; the brilliance of Peak Resorts; where Vail went right and wrong in their acquisition of Peak; the existential challenges of Paoli Peaks; the Very Bad 2021-22 ski season at Attitash; fortress mentality; convincing Vail to upgrade the Attitash Summit Triple; what Gavrilets found when he showed up at Mt. Rose on Saturday of President's Weekend; how the Busers built Mt. Rose into a first-rate ski area; why the family considered selling Mt. Rose around 2017, and ultimately reversed course; committed to independence; “We're over $100 cheaper than Palisades for a full-day lift ticket”; how Slide Mountain, Mt. Rose, and Sky Tavern settled into their modern footprints; Mt. Rose's potential expansion; whether a ski connection between Sky Tavern and Mt. Rose could exist; future lift upgrade priorities; how The Chutes changed Mt. Rose's profile; slopeside lodging; destination potential?; the potential for a tram up to the ski area from Reno; and why Mt. Rose hasn't joined any multi-mountain passes.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewFew ski areas have more aggressively modernized since the turn of the century than Mt. Rose. The mountain dropped its first sixer (Northwest Express), in the ground in 2000, and opened its second (Zephyr), the year it opened The Chutes, one of the most singular terrain pods in the American West. In the intervening years, Rose has shuffled around and modernized the remainder of its lifts, and last year dropped a high-speed quad in place of the old Lakeview triple. The snowmaking system is one of the best in Tahoe. Next up: an expansion across the highway to intermediate terrain that would hang over Sky Tavern.Like Arapahoe Basin, whose oldest chairlift is a 2007 Leitner-Poma fixed-grip quad, Mt. Rose has quietly modernized amid the giants that were destined to destroy it. This isn't supposed to be the story. The story is supposed to be Corporate Conglomerates Are Killing Skiing!!! But they're not. Mt. Rose proves that in Tahoe like A-Basin proves it on the I-70 mainline.Skiers in Reno could easily drive up to Northstar or Heavenly or Palisades Tahoe. But Gavrilets tells us that Mt. Rose is doing better than ever, in spite of the fact that the ski area has no slopeside lodging, no megapass affiliation, and no name recognition outside of a couple-hundred mile radius. Why do you suppose that is?Mt. Rose is a counterintuitive case-study in why so many assumptions about modern skiing are wrong. A place in the market exists for a family-owned and -operated ski area that focuses on delivering a good product at an inflation-adjusted price that would not make a time traveler from 1965 gasp with horror “But that costs more than my car!”I can't always tell you what's wrong with skiing, but I usually know what's right when I see it. And just about everything that Mt. Rose is doing feels exactly right.What I got wrongI mispronounced the name of Mt. Rose's owners, pronouncing “Buser” like “Bus-er” (wrong), rather than “Boozer” (right).Why you should ski Mt. RoseWell there are The Chutes:And all the beefcake lifts:And the 30-minute drive from the airport, meaning that when you fly in to ski Palisades or Heavenly, you can stop and clock a half day at Mt. Rose for $69:And the manageable liftlines, and the parking right at the base of the lifts, and the 350 inches of average annual snowfall. This may not be your ski Narnia, your endless empty, but it's a less-frantic version of whatever they have down the road.Podcast NotesOn three ski areas that were once one ski area that are now two ski areasLift-served skiing on Mt. Rose started with a chairlift strung up from what is now Sky Tavern ski area to what is now the Slide Bowl area of Mt. Rose:Mt. Rose broke off from the lower-mountain area by the time it opened as a separate entity in 1964. The lower-mountain became a non-profit, volunteer-run, learn-to-ski center called Sky Tavern, which continues to operate today:The larger ski area's modern-day footprint was, for several decades, two separate ski areas – one on the Slide Peak terrain and another in Mt. Rose proper:They combined in the late ‘80s:Then, in 2004, The Chutes opened, giving us the Mt. Rose we can ski today:On Ober MountainGavrilets began his career at Tennessee's only ski area, which sits above Gatlinburg. You can access it via tram from downtown, or you can drive up. It's a tiny place, but still has a respectable 600-foot vertical drop. It's an Indy Pass partner. Here's a trailmap:On Peak Resorts and the Peak PassGavrilets spent a good part of his career at Peak Resorts, which Vail purchased in whole in 2019. Here's what their portfolio looked like at its height. The New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania ski areas were included on the Peak Pass outright. You could ski the Midwest ski areas with the pass, but it was one of those “stop by the customer service desk to get a ticket” deals.On the Attitash Summit TripleGavrilets spent a good part of his tenure at Attitash making the case to Vail that the company needed to upgrade the Summit Triple. This past summer, the company finally did it, putting a high-speed quad in its place. That lift is scheduled to open soon, and I went into great detail on the project with Attitash General Manager Brandon Swartz at the 6:12 mark of our recent podcast conversation:On the density of Lake Tahoe skiingThe Tahoe region may have the densest concentration of ski areas in America, with 16 lift-served Alpine ski areas circling the lake. Here's a statistical breakdown of each:On Mt. Rose's history siteMt. Rose recently re-vamped the resort history page of its website. Check it out.On reconfiguring the trails around the Lakeview liftWhen Mt. Rose upgraded the Lakeview chairlift from a triple to a high-speed quad last year, they also reconfigured several trails around it:On Galena ski areaMt. Rose's trailmap shows a potential expansion down across the Mt. Rose highway. Gavrilets tells us that Powdr had attempted to build a standalone resort called Galena down there. I could't find any information on this, but it would be cool if Mt. Rose could activate this terrain:On Shane McConkey crushing The ChutesOn connecting Mt. Rose to Reno via tramWhile it hovers over mild-weather Reno, which averages 22 inches of snowfall per winter, Mt. Rose sits at a monstrous 8,260 feet. Bridging that distance requires navigating one hell of a winding access road:We discuss a potential aerial lift up from town in the podcast, but I'm not sure if it's feasible, cost-wise, as it's 13 air miles from the airport to the ski area. That's about the same distance as the main strip of casinos. Like Gavrilets says in the pod, “if this was Europe, it would already be built.”The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 111/100 in 2023, and number 496 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Oct. 13. It dropped for free subscribers on Oct. 20. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:WhoAmy Ohran, Vice President and General Manager of Northstar, CaliforniaRecorded onOctober 2, 2023About NorthstarClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: EPR Properties, operated by Vail ResortsLocated in: Truckee, CaliforniaYear founded: 1972Pass affiliations:* Epic Pass: unlimited* Epic Local Pass: unlimited with holiday blackouts* Tahoe Local: unlimited with holiday blackouts* Tahoe Value: unlimited with holiday and Saturday blackouts* Epic Day Pass: access with all resorts and 32-resorts tiersClosest neighboring ski areas: Boreal (:21), Tahoe Donner (:22), Palisades Tahoe (:25), Diamond Peak (:25), Soda Springs (:25), Kingvale (:27), Sugar Bowl (:28), Donner Ski Ranch (:29), Mt. Rose (:30), Homewood (:35), Heavenly (:57) - travel times vary considerably pending traffic, weather, and time of year.Base elevation: 6,330 feet (at the village)Summit elevation: 8,610 feet (top of Mt. Pluto)Vertical drop: 2,280 feetSkiable Acres: 3,170 acresAverage annual snowfall: 350 inchesTrail count: 100 (27% advanced, 60% intermediate, 13% beginner)Lift count: 20 (1 six-passenger gondola, 1 pulse gondola, 1 six/eight-passenger chondola, 1 high-speed six pack, 6 high-speed quads, 1 fixed-grip quad, 2 triples, 1 platter, 1 ropetow, 5 carpets – view Lift Blog's inventory of Northstar's lift fleet)Why I interviewed herI am slowly working my way through the continent's great ski regions. Aspen, Vail, Beaver Creek, Ski Cooper, Keystone, Breckenridge, and A-Basin along the I-70 corridor (Copper is coming). Snowbird, Solitude, Deer Valley, Sundance, and Snowbasin in the Wasatch (Park City is next). Jay Peak, Smugglers' Notch, Bolton Valley, Mad River Glen, Sugarbush, and Killington in Northern Vermont.I'm a little behind in Tahoe. Before today, the only entrants into this worthy tome have been with the leaders of Palisades Tahoe and Heavenly. But I'm working my way around the lake. Northstar today. Mount Rose in November. I'll get to the rest as soon as I'm able (you can always access the full podcast archive, and view the upcoming schedule, here or from the stormskiing.com homepage).I don't only cover megaresorts, of course, and the episodes with family-owned ski area operators always resonate deeply with my listeners. Many of you would prefer that I focus my energies solely on these under-covered gems. But corporate megaresorts matter a lot. They are where the vast majority of skier visits occur, and therefore are the backdrop to most skiers' wintertime stories. I personally love skiing them. They tend to be vast and varied, with excellent lift networks and gladed kingdoms mostly ignored by the masses. The “corporate blandness” so abhorred by posturing Brobots is, in practice, a sort of urban myth of the mountains. Vail Mountain and Stowe have as much quirk and character as Alta and Mad River Glen. Anyone who tells you different either hasn't skied them all, or is confusing popularity with soullessness.Every ski area guards terrain virtues that no amount of marketing can beat out of it. Northstar has plenty: expansive glades, big snowfalls, terrific park, long fall-line runs. Unfortunately, the mountain is the LA Clippers of Lake Tahoe, overshadowed, always, by big Palisades, the LA Lakers of big-time Cali skiing.But Northstar is a hella good ski area, as any NoCal shredder who's honest with themselves will admit. It's not KT-22, but it isn't trying to be. Most skier fantasize about lapping the Mothership, just as, I suppose, many playground basketball players fantasize about dunking from the freethrow line. In truth, most are better off lobbing shots from 15 feet out, just as most skiers are going to have a better day off Martis or Backside at Northstar than off the beastly pistes five miles southwest. But that revelation, relatively easy to arrive at, can be hard for progression-minded skiers to admit. And Northstar, because of that, often doesn't get the credit it deserves. But it's worth a deeper look.What we talked aboutTahoe's incredible 2022-23 winter; hey where'd our trail signs go?; comparing last year's big winter to the record 2016-17 season; navigating the Cottonwoods in a VW Bug; old-school Cottonwoods; rock-climbing as leadership academy; Bend in the 1990s; how two of Tahoe's smallest ski areas stay relevant in a land of giants; the importance of parks culture to Northstar; trying to be special in Tahoe's all-star lineup; Northstar's natural wind protection; who really owns Northstar; potential expansions on Sawtooth Ridge, Lookout Mountain, and Sawmill; potential terrain expansion within the current footprint; last year's Comstock lift upgrade; contemplating the future of the Rendezvous lift; which lift upgrade could come next; the proposed Castle Peak transport gondola; paid parking; the Epic Pass; a little-known benefit of the Tahoe Local Pass; the impact of Saturday blackouts; and Tōst.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewVail Resorts' 2022 Epic Lift upgrade struck me as a mind-bending exercise. Not just because the company was attempting to build 21 new lifts in a single summer (they managed to complete 18), but because that number represents a fraction of Vail's hundreds of lifts across its 37 North American resorts. Vail Mountain alone houses 18 high-speed chairlifts and two gondolas. Park City owns 16 detachables. Whistler has six or nine gondolas – depending on how you count them – and 13 high-speed chairs. You can keep counting through Heavenly, Breckenridge, Keystone – how do you even maintain such a sprawling network, let alone continue to upgrade it?Northstar managed to snag a piece of Vail's largess, securing a four-to-six replacement for the Comstock Express. It was just the third major lift upgrade since Vail bought the joint in 2010, following the 2011 addition of the Promised Land Express quad and the 2015 replacement of the Big Springs Gondola. So why Comstock? And what's next for a ski area with a trio of high-speed quads (Arrow, Backside, Vista), that are approaching that 30-year expiration date for first-generation detachable lifts?Tahoe is also one of several U.S. ski regions coping with a generational crisis of untenable congestion and cost. The culprits, in no particular order, are an over-reliance on individual automobiles as the primary mechanism of ski resort access, megapasses that enable and empower more frequent skiing, a Covid-driven exodus from cities, a permanent shift to remote work, short-term rentals choking local housing stock, and reflexive opposition to any development of any kind by an array of NIMBYs and leaf defenders.Northstar, an enormous and easy-to-access megaresort owned by the world's largest ski area operator and seated in America's most populous state, sits in the bullseye of several of these megatrends. The resort is responding with a big toolbox, tiering access across a variety of Epic Passes, implementing a partial paid parking plan, and continuing a masterplan that would increase on-mountain beds and decrease automobile congestion. Like every ski area, it's a work in progress, never quite finished and never quite perfect, but tiptoeing maybe a little closer to it every year.What I got wrongAbout the relative size of NorthstarI noted in Ohran's podcast intro that Northstar was America's ninth largest ski area. That's technically still true, but once Steamboat officially opens its Mahogany Ridge expansion this winter, the Alterra-owned resort will shoot up to the number eight spot, kicking Northstar down to number 10. Looking a few years down the road, Deer Valley is set to demote Northstar to number 11, once Mt. Fancypants completes its 3,700-acre expansion (boosting the mountain to 5,726 acres), and takes the fourth-place spot between Big Sky and Vail Mountain.About the coming ski seasonI noted that Northstar was opening, “probably around Thanksgiving.” The resort's scheduled opening date is Nov. 17.About Powdr's Tahoe complexI asked Ohran about her experience running Powdr's “three ski areas” in Tahoe, before correcting that to “two ski areas.” The confusion stemmed from the three distinct brands that Powdr operates in Tahoe: the Soda Springs ski area, the Boreal ski area, and the Woodward terrain park. While these are distinct brands, Woodward's winter facilities are part of Boreal ski area:Why you should ski NorthstarThe Brobots won't do much to surprise or interest you. That's why they're the Brobots. Rote takes, recited like multiplication tables, lacking nuance or context, designed to pledge allegiance to Brobot Nation. The Brobots hate Vail and the Ikon Pass. They despise “corporate” skiing, without ever defining what that is. They rage against ski-town congestion and traffic, while reflexively opposing any solutions that would require change of any kind. They worship dive bars, weed, and beanie caps. They despise tourists, chairlift safety bars, slopeside condos, and paid parking of any kind. They are the Brobots.Lake Tah-Bro is a subspecies of Brobotus Americanus. Lake Tah-Bro wishes you weren't here, but since you are, he wants you to understand his commandments. One of which is this: “Flatstar” is not cool. Like you. Real-ass skiers ski Palisades (steep), Alpine (chill), or Kirkwood (wild). But OK, if you must, go see for yourself. Tah-Bro won't be joining you. He has to go buy a six-pack of craft beer to celebrate his six-month anniversary of moving here from Virginia, while tapping out a Tweet reminding everyone that he's a local.It must be an exhausting way to live, having to constantly remind everyone how ridiculously cool you are. But luckily for you, I don't care about being cool. I'm a dad with two kids. I drive a minivan. I drink Miller Lite and rarely drive past a Taco Bell. My musical tastes are straightforward and mainstream. I track my ski days on an app and take a lot of pictures. I am not 100 percent sure which brand of ski boots I own (I trusted the bootfitter). My primary Brobot trait is that I like to ski mostly off-piste. Otherwise you can call me Sir Basic Bro. Or don't. I won't see it anyway – I stopped reading social media comments a long time ago.Brah do you have a point here? Yes. My point is this: I am supremely qualified to tell you that Northstar is a great ski area. It is huge. It is interesting. It has more glades than you could manage if you spent all winter trying. It is threaded with an excellent high-speed lift network that, during the week, rarely has an over-abundance of skiers to actually ride it. You can cruise the wide-open or sail the empty trees. Park Brahs can park-out on the Vista Park Brah.But if you take my advice and lap the place for an afternoon and find that it's just too flat for your radness, simply ask Ski Patrol if you can borrow a pair of scissors. Then cut the sleeves off your jacket and all under-layers, and descend each run in an arms-up posture of supreme muscle-itude. Everyone will be aware of and in awe of your studliness, and know that you are only skiing Flatstar as a sort of joke, the mountain a prop to your impossibly cool lifestyle. Your Instapost followers will love it.Podcast NotesOn Tahoe's competitive landscapeTahoe hosts one of the densest clusters of ski areas in North America. Here are the 16 currently in operation:On Northstar's masterplan Northstar's 2017 masterplan outlines several potential expansions, each of which we discuss in the podcast:On the “My Epic” appOhran referenced Vail's new My Epic app, which I devoted a section to explaining in the article accompanying my recent Keystone podcast. The Epic Pass website notes that the app will be “launching in October.”On Northstar's original brand campaignI couldn't find any relics from Northstar's 1972 “Everything in the middle of nowhere” ad campaign. I did, however, find this 1978 trailmap noting that all-day adult lift tickets cost $13:That's $64.02 adjusted for inflation, in case you're wondering.The Sierra Sun ran a nice little history of Northstar last year, in honor of the resort's 50-year anniversary:On Dec. 22, 1972, Northstar-at-Tahoe began spinning its original five lifts, operating under the motto “Everything in the middle of nowhere.” The first lifts were given alphabetic names A, B, C, and D. A T-chair provided access to mid-mountain from the village. The cost for an adult to ski for the day in 1972 was $8, gear could be rented for $7.50, and a room for the night at the resort was $30. …The 1980s brought further growth to the resort and in 1988 the first snowboarders took their turns at the resort. That year, George N. Gillett Jr., president of Colorado's Vail Associates purchased Northstar-at-Tahoe. By 1992, Gillett had run into financial troubles and lost Vail Associates. Gillett managed to come away with enough resources to form Booth Creek Ski Holdings, Inc. Gillett's new company focused on real estate development and creating multi-season resorts. In 1996, the company acquired Northstar-at-Tahoe, Sierra-at-Tahoe, and Bear Mountain for $127 million, and began developing the Big Springs area at Northstar. …The new millennium brought with it a joint venture between Booth Creek Ski Holdings and East West Partners with the aim to complete the resort's real estate and mountain development plan. The first phase of the project opened in 2004 and included the foundation for the village along with the completion of Iron Horse North, Iron Horse South, and the Great Bear Lodge buildings. The ice rink and surrounding commercial space were completed during this time. Skiers and riders were also treated to new terrain with the installation of Lookout Lift.From 2005 through 2008 work continued at the base of the mountain to complete the gondola building along with the Catamount and Big Horn buildings in the village. Collaboration between East West Partners and Hyatt Corp also began at this time, leading to the Northstar Lodge Hyatt project. The first building was started in May 2007 and completed in December 2008. Along with these came the Village Swim & Fitness center and the Highlands Gondola from the Northstar Lodge to The Ritz-Carlton Hotel and neighboring building.In 2010, Vail Resorts, Inc., entered the fray and purchased Northstar-at-Tahoe from Booth Creek for $63 million, and later renamed it Northstar California Resort.On Matt JonesOhran mentions Kirkwood GM Matt Jones once or twice during the pod, which we recorded on Oct. 2. This past Tuesday, Oct. 10, Alterra announced that they had hired Jones as the new president and chief operating officer of Stratton, Vermont.On that deep deep winterWhen I was skiing around Northstar in March, I snagged a bunch of hey-where'd-the-world-go shots of stuff buried in snow:The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 85/100 in 2023, and number 471 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane, or, more likely, I just get busy). You can also email skiing@substack.com. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on May 4. It dropped for free subscribers on May 7. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe for free below:WhoDee Byrne, President and Chief Operating Officer of Palisades Tahoe, CaliforniaRecorded onApril 24, 2023About Palisades TahoeClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Alterra Mountain CompanyPass affiliations: Unlimited access on the Ikon Pass; unlimited access with holiday blackouts on the Ikon Base PassLocated in: Olympic Valley, CaliforniaYear founded: * Palisades/Olympic side (as Squaw Valley): 1949* Alpine Meadows: 1961Closest neighboring ski areas: Granlibakken (14 minutes from Palisades base), Homewood (18 minutes), Northstar (23 minutes), Tahoe Donner (24 minutes), Boreal (24 minutes), Soda Springs (28 minutes), Donner Ski Ranch (28 minutes), Kingvale (29 minutes), Sugar Bowl (30 minutes), Diamond Peak (39 minutes), Mt. Rose (45 minutes), Sky Tavern (50), Heavenly (1 hour) - travel times vary dramatically given weather conditions and time of dayBase elevation | summit elevation | vertical drop:* Alpine Meadows side: 6,835 feet | 8,637 feet | 1,802 feet* Olympic Valley side: 6,200 feet | 9,050 feet | 2,850 feetSkiable Acres: 6,000* Alpine Meadows side: 2,400* Olympic Valley side: 3,600Average annual snowfall: 400 inches (713 inches for the 2023-24 ski season through May 3!)Trail count: 270-plus* Alpine Meadows side: 100-plus (25% beginner, 40% intermediate, 35% advanced)* Olympic Valley side: 170-plus (25% beginner, 45% intermediate, 30% advanced)Lift count: 42 (10-passenger tram, 28-passenger funitel, 8-passenger gondola, 8 six-packs, 5 high-speed quads, 1 fixed-grip quad, 10 triples, 8 doubles, 7 carpets - view Lift Blog's inventory of Palisades Tahoe's lift fleet)* Alpine Meadows: 13 (1 six-pack,  3 high-speed quads, 2 triples, 5 doubles,  2 carpets)* Palisades/Olympic: 28 (120-passenger tram, 28-passenger funitel, 7 six-packs, 2 high-speed quads, 1 quad, 8 triples, 3 doubles, 5 carpets)* Shared lifts: 1 (8-passenger Base-to-Base Gondola)Why I interviewed herImagine this: I'm a Midwest teenager who has notched exactly three days on skis, on three separate 200-vert bumps. I know vaguely that there is skiing out West, and that it is big. But I'm thinking Colorado, maybe Wyoming. California? California is Beach Boys and palm trees. Surfboards and San Diego. I have no idea that California has mountains, let alone ski resorts. Anticipating the skis, boots, and poles that I've requested as the totality of my Christmas list, I pick up the December 1994 issue of Skiing (RIP), and read the following by Kristen Ulmer:Nothing is random. You live, die, pay taxes, move to Squaw. It's the place you see in all the ski flicks, with the groovy attitudes, toasty-warm days, wild lines, and that enormous lake. It's California! Squallywood! It's the one place where every born-to-ski skier, at some point or other, wants to move to; where people will crawl a thousand miles over broken glass for the chance to ski freezer burn. The one place to make it as a “professional” skier.My friend Kent Kreitler, a phenomenal skier who doesn't live anywhere in particular, finally announced, “I think I'm move to Squaw.”“So Kent,” I said, “let me tell you what the rest of your life will be like.” And I laid it out for him. …You're curious to find out if you're as good a skier as you think. So you find a group of locals and try to keep up. On powder days the excitement builds like a pressure cooker. Move fast, because it only takes an hour for the entire mountain to get tracked up. There's oodles of cliff jumps and psycho lines. You'd better just do it, because within seconds, 10 other yahoos will have already jumped and tracked out the landing pad.If you're a truly amazing skier (anything else inspires only polite smiles and undisguised yawns), then you land clean on jumps and shred through anything with style. If not, the hyperactivity of the place will motivate you to ski the same lines anyway. Either way is fulfilling.Occasionally a random miracle occurs, and the patrol opens the famed Palisades on Squaw Peak. On those days you don't bother with a warm-up run – just hike 15 minutes from the top of Siberia Express chair and coolly launch some hospital air off Main Chute.There are other places to express your extreme nature. When everything else gets tracked, you hike up Granite Peak for its steep chutes. If the snowpack is good, you climb 10 minutes from the top of the KT-22 chair to Eagle's Nest. And jumping the Fingers off KT-22 seems particularly heroic: Not only do you need speed to clear the sloping rocks, but it's right (ahem) under the lift.At the conclusion of that ski season, teenage Stuart Winchester, a novice skier who lived in his parents' basement, announced, “I think I'm moving to Squaw.” “No D*****s,” his mom said, “you're going to college.”Which doesn't mean I ever forgot that high-energy introduction to California extreme. I re-read that article dozens of times (you can read the full bit here). Until my brain had been coded to regard the ski resort now known as Palisades Tahoe (see why?) as one of the spiritual and cultural homelands of U.S. lift-served skiing.Ulmer's realm, hyperactive as it was, looks pokey by today's standards. An accompanying essay in that same issue of Skiing, written by Eric Hanson, describes a very different resort than the one you'll encounter today:Locals seem proud that there's so little development here. The faithful will say it's because everything that matters is up on the mountain itself: bottomless steeps, vast acreage, 33 lifts and no waiting. America's answer to the wide-open ski circuses of Europe. After all these years the mountain is still uncrowded, except on weekends when people pile in from the San Francisco Bay area in droves. Squaw is unflashy, underbuilt, and seems entirely indifferent to success. The opposite of what you would expect one of America's premier resorts to be.Apparently, “flashy” included, you know, naming trails. Check out this circa 1996 trailmap, which shows lift names, but only a handful of runs:Confusion reigned, according to Hanson:Every day, we set off armed with our trail map and the printed list of the day's groomed runs in search of intermediate terrain – long steep runs groomed for cruising, unmogulled routes down from the top of the black-diamond chairs. It wasn't easy. The grooming sheet named runs which weren't marked on the trail map. The only trail named on the map is The Mountain Run, an expressway that drops 2,000 feet from Gold Coast to the village. And most of the biggest verticals were on the chairs – KT-22, Cornice II, Headwall, Silverado, Broken Arrow – marked “experts only.” We didn't relish the idea of going up an expert chair looking for a particular groomed route down, if the groomed route wasn't to be found. I began feeling nostalgic for all those totem poles of green and blue and black trail signs that clutter the landscapes of other ski resorts, but at least keep the skier oriented.I asked a patroller where I could find some of the runs on the groomed list. He wasn't sure. He told me that the grooming crew and the ski patrol didn't have the same names for many of the runs.Just amazing. While Palisades Tahoe is now a glimmering model of a modern American ski resort, that raw-and-rowdy past is still sewn into the DNA of this fascinating place.What we talked aboutTahoe's megaseason; corn harvest; skiing into July and… maybe beyond; why Alpine will be the later operator this summer; why the base-to-base gondola ceased operation on April 30; snow exhaustion; Cali spring skiing; reminiscing on Pacific Northwest ski culture; for the love of teaching and turning; skiing as adventure; from 49 Degrees North to Vail to Aspen to Tahoe; Tahoe culture shock; Palisades' vast and varied ski school; reflections on the name change a year and a half later; going deep on the base-to-base gondola; the stark differences between the cultural vibe on the Alpine Meadows and Palisades sides of the resort and whether the gondola has compromised those distinctions; why the gondola took more than a decade to build and what finally pushed it through; White Wolf, the property that hosts an unfinished chairlift between Palisades and Alpine; how the gondola took cars off the road; why the base-to-base gondola didn't overload KT-22's terrain; the Mothership; the new Red Dog sixer; why Palisades re-oriented the lift to run lower to the ground; why the lift was only loading four passengers at a time for large parts of the season; snowmaking as fire-suppression system; how Palisades and Mammoth assisted Sierra-at-Tahoe's recovery; candidates for lift upgrades at Alpine Meadows; “fixed-grip lifts are awesome”; an Alpine masterplan refresh incoming; which lift could be next in line for upgrades on the Palisades side; the “biggest experience bust on the Palisades side of the resort”; why Silverado and Granite Chief will likely never be upgraded to detachable lifts; why the Silverado terrain is so rarely open and what it takes to make it live; whether Palisades Tahoe could ever leave the unlimited-with-blackouts tier on the Ikon Base Pass; and paid parking incoming.             Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewThis was the second time I've featured Palisades Tahoe on The Storm Skiing Podcast. The first was a conversation with then-resort president Ron Cohen in September 2020, shortly after the ski area announced that it would ditch the “Squaw Valley” name. We spent the entire 49-minute conversation discussing that name change. At the time, the podcast was mostly focused on New England and New York, and a deep exploration of a distant resort would have been a little off-brand.But The Storm has evolved, and my coverage now firmly includes the State of California. Thank goodness. What an incredible ski state. So many huge resorts, so much wide-open terrain, so much snow, so much energy. The Northeast tugs skiing from the earth through technology and willpower, pasting white streaks over brown land, actualizing the improbable in a weird algorithm that only pencils out because 56 million people camp out within driving distance. California is different. California delivers skiing because it's lined top to bottom with giant mountains that summon ungodly oceans of snow from the clouds. It just happens Brah. There aren't even that many ski areas here – just 28, or 29 if you count the uber-dysfunctional Mt. Waterman – but there seems to be one everywhere you need one – LA (Big Bear, Baldy, Mountain High), Fresno (China Peak), Modesto (Dodge Ridge), Stockton (Bear Valley), Sacramento and the Bay Area (all of Tahoe). Among these are some of the largest and most-developed ski areas in America.And none is bigger than Palisades Tahoe. Well, Heavenly was until this year, as I outlined earlier this week, but the base-to-base gondola changed all that. The ski area formerly known as Squaw Valley and the ski area still-known as Alpine Meadows are now officially one interconnected ski goliath. That's a big deal.Add a new six-pack (Red Dog), a sufficient period to reflect on the name change, a historic winter, and the ongoing impacts of the Covid-driven outdoor boom and the Ikon Pass, and it was a perfect time to check in on one of Alterra's trophy properties.Why you should ski Palisades TahoeOne of the most oft-dished compliments to emphasize the big-mountain cred of a North American ski resort is that it “feels like Europe.” But there just aren't that many ski areas around these parts worthy of that description. Big Sky, with its dramatic peaks and super-duper out-of-base bubble lifts. Snowbird-Alta, with their frenzied scale and wild terrain and big-box tram (though they get way too much snow to mistake for Europe). Whistler, with its village and polyglot vibe. And then there's Palisades Tahoe:Nowhere else in America do you stand in the base area and wonder if you should hop on the tram or the gondola or the other big-gondola-thingy-that-you're-not-quite-sure-what-it-is (the funitel) or the most iconic chairlift in the country (KT-22). Or Wa She Shu. Or Exhibition or Red Dog. And go up and up and then you never need to see the base area again. Up to Headwall or Gold Coast or so help-you-God Silverado if it's open. Or up and over to Alpine and another whole ski area that used to be a giant ski resort but is now just a small part of a giant-er ski resort.It's too much to describe or even really try to. In our conversation, Byrne called Palisades a “super-regional” resort. One that most people drive to, rather than fly to. I'm telling you this one is worth the flight. From anywhere. For anyone. Just go.Podcast NotesOn the name changeThe last time I interviewed Byrne, it was for an article I wrote on the name change in 2021:The name change, promised more than a year ago, acknowledges that many Native Americans consider the word “squaw” to be a racist and sexist slur.“Anyone who spends time at these mountains can feel the passion of our dedicated skiers and riders,” said Ron Cohen, former president and COO of Palisades Tahoe, who moved into the same position at Alterra's Mammoth Mountain in June. “It's electric, exciting, reverential, and incredibly motivating. However, no matter how deep, meaningful, and positive these feelings are and no matter how much our guests don't intend to offend anyone, it is not enough to justify continuing to operate under a name that is deeply offensive to indigenous people across North America.”The former resort name was perhaps the most prominent modern use of the word “squaw” in America, skiing's equivalent to the Cleveland Indians or Washington Redskins, two professional sports teams that are also in the process of replacing their names (Cleveland will become the Guardians, while Washington will announce its new name early next year). The update broadcasts a powerful signal to an American mainstream that still largely regards the word “squaw” as an innocuous synonym for a Native American woman.“We know the founders of our resort had no intention of causing offense in choosing this name for the resort, nor have any of our patrons who have spoken this word over the last seven decades,” said Cohen. “But as our society evolves, we must acknowledge the need for change when we are confronted with harsh realities. Having our name be associated with pain and dehumanization is contrary to our goal of making the outdoors a welcoming space for all people. I feel strongly that we have been given the rare opportunity to effect lasting, positive change; to find a new name that reflects our core values, storied past and respect for all those who have enjoyed this land.”It's a long piece, and my opinion on it stands, but I'll reiterate this bit:I realize that many of us learned something different in grade school. I am one of them. Until last year, I did not know that Native Americans considered this word to be offensive. But the resort, after extensive research and consultation with the local Washoe Tribe, made a good case that the name was an anachronism.Cohen came on my podcast to further elaborate. The arguments made sense. What I had learned in grade-school was wrong. “Squaw” was not a word that belonged on the masthead of a major ski resort.The immediate reaction that this is some PC move is flimsy and hardly worth addressing, but OK: this is not a redefining of history to cast a harmless thing as nefarious. Rather, it is an example of a long-ostracized group finding its voice and saying, “Hey, this is what this actually means – can you rethink how you're using this word?”If you want to scream into the wind about this, be my guest. The name change is final. The place will still have plenty of skiers. If you don't want to be one of them, there are plenty of other places to ski, around Tahoe and elsewhere. But what this means for the ski terrain is exactly nothing at all. The resort, flush with capital from Alterra, is only getting bigger and better. Sitting out that evolution for what is a petty protest is anyone's mistake to make.“We want to be on the right side of history on this,” said Byrne. “While this may take some getting used to, our name change was an important initiative for our company and community. At the end of the day, ‘squaw' is a hurtful word, and we are not hurtful people. We have a well-earned reputation as a progressive resort at the forefront of ski culture, and progress cannot happen without change.”Apparently there are still a handful of Angry Ski Bros who occasionally track Byrne down on social media and yell about this. Presumably in all-caps. Sometimes I think about what life would be like right now had the commercial internet failed to take off and honestly it's hard to conclude that it wouldn't be a hell of a lot better than whatever version of reality we've found ourselves in.On federal place names eliminating the use of the word “squaw”Byrne mentioned that the federal government had also moved to eliminate the word “squaw” from its place names. Per a New York Times article last March:The map dots, resembling a scattergram of America, point to snow-covered pinnacles, remote islands and places in between.Each of the 660 points, shown on maps of federal lands and waterways, includes the word “squaw” in its name, a term Native Americans regard as a racist and misogynistic slur.Now the Interior Department, led by Deb Haaland, the first Native American cabinet secretary, is taking steps to strip the word from mountains, rivers, lakes and other geographic sites and has solicited input from tribes on new names for the landmarks.A task force created by the department will submit the new names for final approval from the Board on Geographic Names, the federal body that standardizes American place names. The National Park Service was ordered to take similar steps.By September, the Biden administration had completed the project. The word persists in non-federally owned place names, however. One ski area – Big Squaw in Maine – still officially carries the name, even though the state was among the first to ban the use of the word “squaw,” back in 2000. While a potential new ownership group had vowed to change the ski area's name, they ultimately backed out of the deal. As long as the broken-down, barely functional ski area remains under the ownership of professional knucklehead and bootleg timber baron James Confalone, the ski area – and the volunteer group that keeps the one remaining chairlift spinning – is stuck with the name.On White Wolf If you've ever looked off the backside of KT-22, you've no doubt noticed the line of chairlift towers standing empty on the mountain:This is White Wolf, a long-envisioned but as-yet-incomplete private resort owned by a local gent named Troy Caldwell, who purchased the land in 1989 for $400,000. Byrne and I discuss this property briefly on the podcast. The Palisades Tahoe blog posted a terrific history of Caldwell and White Wolf last year:So, they shifted to the idea of a private ski area, named White Wolf. In 2000, Placer County issued Caldwell a permit to build his own chairlift. A local homeowners' association later sued the county for issuing him that permit, but, in 2005, the lift towers and cables went in, but construction slowed on the private chairlift as Caldwell weighed his options for a future interconnect between the resorts. To date, the chairlift has yet to operate—but that may be changing if Caldwell's long-term plan comes to fruition.In 2016, Caldwell submitted plans to Placer County for a 275-acre private-resort housing project on his land that would include the construction of dozens of fire-safe custom homes, as well employee housing units, a pool, an ice-skating rink, and two private chairlifts, including the one that's already constructed.After the Palisades Tahoe resorts came under the same ownership in 2012, the plan to physically link them has now become reality. Caldwell is the missing piece enabling the long-awaited gondola to connect the two mountains over his land. Roughly half of the Base to Base Gondola and its mid-stations are on property owned by the Caldwells.“Sure, we could have sold the land for $50 million and moved to Tahiti,” Caldwell says with a laugh. “But we made the decision that this is our life, this is what we wanted to do. We wanted to finish the dream, connect the ski areas and do what we initially set out to do.”Unfortunately, it is unlikely that the general public will ever be able to ski White Wolf.On Alpine Meadows' masterplanByrne and I discuss several proposed but unbuilt lifts at Alpine Meadows, including the Rollers lift, shown here on the 2015 masterplan:And here, just for fun, is an old proposed line for the gondola, which would not have crossed the KT-22 Express:On Sierra-at-Tahoe and the Caldor FireI discussed this one in my recent article for the Heavenly pod.Parting shotThe Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 41/100 in 2023, and number 427 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane, or, more likely, I just get busy). You can also email skiing@substack.com. 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This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on May 2. It dropped for free subscribers on May 5. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe for free below:WhoTom Fortune, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Heavenly and Vail's Tahoe Region (Heavenly, Northstar, and Kirkwood)Recorded onApril 25 , 2023About Heavenly and Vail's Tahoe RegionHeavenlyClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Vail ResortsLocated in: Stateline, Nevada and South Lake Tahoe, CaliforniaYear founded: 1955Pass affiliations: Unlimited access on Epic Pass; Unlimited access with holiday blackouts on Epic Local Pass, Tahoe Local Pass, Tahoe Value PassClosest neighboring ski areas: Sierra-at-Tahoe (30 minutes), Diamond Peak (45 minutes), Kirkwood (51 minutes), Mt. Rose (1 hour), Northstar (1 hour), Sky Tavern (1 hour, 5 minutes) - travel times vary dramatically given weather conditions and time of day.Base elevation: 6,565 feet at California Lodge; the Heavenly Gondola leaves from Heavenly Village at 6,255 feet – when snowpack allows, you can ski all the way to the village, though this is technically backcountry terrainSummit elevation: 10,040 feet at the top of Sky ExpressVertical drop: 3,475 feet from the summit to California Lodge; 3,785 feet from the summit to Heavenly VillageSkiable Acres: 4,800Average annual snowfall: 360 inches (570 inches for 2022-23 ski season as of May 2)Trail count: 97Lift count: 26 lifts (1 50-passenger tram, 1 eight-passenger gondola, 2 six-packs, 8 high-speed quads, 1 fixed-grip quad, 5 triples, 2 doubles, 2 ropetows, 4 carpets)NorthstarClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Vail ResortsLocated in: Truckee, CaliforniaYear founded: 1972Pass affiliations: Unlimited access on Epic Pass; Unlimited access with holiday blackouts on Epic Local Pass, Tahoe Local Pass; unlimited with holiday and Saturday blackouts on Tahoe Value PassClosest neighboring ski areas: Tahoe Donner (24 minutes), Boreal (25 minutes), Donner Ski Ranch (27 minutes), Palisades Tahoe (27 minutes), Diamond Peak (27 minutes), Soda Springs (29 minutes), Kingvale (32 minutes), Sugar Bowl (33 minutes), Mt. Rose (34 minutes), Homewood (35 minutes), Sky Tavern (39 minutes), Heavenly (1 hour) - travel times vary dramatically given weather conditions and time of day.Base elevation: 6,330 feetSummit elevation: 8,610 feetVertical drop: 2,280 feetSkiable Acres: 3,170Average annual snowfall: 350 inches (665 inches for 2022-23 ski season as of May 2)Trail count: 106Lift count: 19 (1 six-passenger gondola, 1 pulse gondola, 1 chondola with 6-pack chairs & 8-passenger cabins, 1 six-pack, 6 high-speed quads, 1 fixed-grip quad, 2 triples, 1 platter, 5 magic carpets)KirkwoodClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Vail ResortsLocated in: Kirkwood, CaliforniaYear founded: 1972Pass affiliations: Unlimited access on Epic Pass, Kirkwood Pass; Unlimited access with holiday blackouts on Epic Local Pass, Tahoe Local Pass; unlimited with holiday and Saturday blackouts on Tahoe Value PassClosest neighboring ski areas: Sierra-at-Tahoe (48 minutes), Heavenly (48 minutes) - travel times vary dramatically given weather conditions and time of day.Base elevation: 7,800 feetSummit elevation: 9,800 feetVertical drop: 2,000 feetSkiable Acres: 2,300Average annual snowfall: 354 inches (708 inches for 2022-23 ski season as of May 2)Trail count: 94Lift count: 13 (2 high-speed quads, 1 fixed-grip quad, 6 triples, 1 double, 1 T-bar, 2 carpets)Why I interviewed himFor decades, Heavenly was the largest ski area that touched the state of California. By a lot. Four drive-to base areas serving 4,800 acres across two states. Mammoth? Ha! Its name misleads – 3,500 acres, barely bigger than Keystone. To grasp Heavenly's scale, look again at the new North Bowl lift on the trailmap above. A blip, one red line lost among dozens. Lodged near the base like the beginner lifts we're all used to ignoring. But that little lift rises almost 1,300 vertical feet over nearly a mile. That's close to the skiable drop of Sugar Bowl (1,500 feet), itself a major Tahoe ski area. Imagine laying Sugar Bowl's 1,650 acres over the Heavenly trailmap, then add Sierra-at-Tahoe (2,000 acres) and Mt. Rose (1,200). Now you're even.Last year, Palisades Tahoe wrecked the party, stringing a gondola between Alpine Meadows and the resort formerly known as Squaw Valley. They were technically one resort before, but I'm not an adherent of the these-two-ski-areas-are-one-ski-area-because-we-say-so school of marketing. But now the two sides really are united, crafting a 6,000-acre super-resort that demotes Heavenly to second-largest in Tahoe.Does it really matter? Heavenly is one of the more impressive hunks of interconnected mountain that you'll ever ski in America. Glance northwest and the lake booms away forever into the horizon. Peer east and there, within reach as your skis touch a 20-foot snowbase, is a tumbling brown forever, the edge of the great American desert that stretches hundreds of miles through Nevada, Utah, and Colorado.When Vail Resorts raised its periscope above Colorado for the first time two decades ago, Heavenly fell in its sites. The worthy fifth man, an all-star forward to complement the Colorado quad of Vail, Beaver Creek, Keystone, and Breck. That's not an easy role to fill. It had to be a mountain that was enormous, evolved, transcendent. Someplace that could act as both a draw for variety-seeking Eagle County faithful and an ambassador for the Vail brand as benevolent caretaker. Heavenly, a sort of Vail Mountain West – with its mostly intermediate pitch, multiple faces, and collection of high-speed lifts cranking out of every gully – was perfect, the most logical extra-Colorado manifestation of big-mountain skiing made digestible for the masses.That's still what Heavenly is, mostly: a ski resort for everyone. You can get in trouble, sure, in Mott or Killebrew or by underestimating the spiral down Gunbarrel. But this is an intermediate mountain, a cruisers' mountain. Even the traverses – and there are many – are enjoyable. Those views, man. Set the cruise control and wander forever. For a skier who doesn't care to be the best skier in the world but who wants to experience some of the best skiing in the world, this is the place.What we talked aboutRecords smashing all over the floor around Tahoe; why there won't be more season extensions; Heavenly's spring-skiing footprint; managing weather-related delays and shutdowns in a social-media age; it's been a long long winter in Tahoe; growing up skiing the Pacific Northwest; Stevens Pass in the ‘70s; remember when Stevens Pass and Schweitzer had the same owner?; why leaving the thing you love most can be the best thing sometimes; overlooked Idaho; pausing at Snow King; fitting rowdy Kirkwood into the Vail Resorts puzzle; the enormous complexity of Heavenly; what it means to operate in two states; a special assignment at Stevens Pass; stabilizing a resort in chaos; why Heavenly was an early snowmaking adopter; Hugh and Bill Killebrew; on the ground during the Caldor Fire; snowmaking systems as fire-fighting sprinkler systems; fire drills; Sierra-at-Tahoe's lost season and how Heavenly and Kirkwood helped; wind holds and why they seem to be becoming more frequent; “it can be calm down in the base area and blowing 100 up top”; potential future alternatives to Sky Express as a second lift-served route back to Nevada from California; a lift-upgrade wishlist for Heavenly; how Mott Canyon lift could evolve; potential tram replacement lifts; the immediate impact of the new North Bowl express quad; how Northstar, Kirkwood, and Heavenly work together as a unit; paid parking incoming; and the Epic Pass.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewThe first half of my life was dominated by one immutable looming fact: the year 2000 would arrive. That's how we all referenced it, every time: “the year 2000.” As though it were not just another year but the president of all years. The turning of a millennium. For the first time in a thousand years. It sounded so fantastical, so improbable, so futuristic. As though aliens had set an invasion date and we all knew it but we just didn't know if they would vaporize us or gift us their live-forever beer recipe. Y2K hysteria added a layer of intrigue and mild thrill. Whatever else happened with your life, wherever you ended up, whoever you turned out to be, this was a party you absolutely could not miss.This winter in Tahoe was like that. If you had any means of getting there, you had to go. Utah too. But everything is more dramatic in Tahoe. The snows piled Smurf Village-like on rooftops. The incredible blizzards raking across the Sierras. The days-long mountain closures. It was a rare winter, a cold winter, a relentless winter, a record-smashing winter for nearly every ski area ringing the 72-mile lake.Tahoe may never see a winter like this again in our lifetimes. So how are they dealing with it? They know what to do with snow in Tahoe. But we all know what to do with water until our basement floods. Sometimes a thing you need is a thing you can get too much of.In March I flew to California, circled the lake, skied with the people running the mountains. Exhaustion, tinted with resignation, reigned. Ski season always sprawls at the top of the Sierras, but this winter – with its relentless atmospheric rivers, the snows high and low, the piles growing back each night like smashed anthills in the driveway – amplified as it went, like an action movie with no comedic breaks or diner-meal interludes. How were they doing now, as April wound down and the snows faded and corn grew on the mountainside? And at the end of what's been a long three years in Tahoe, with Covid shutdowns leading into a Covid surge leading into wildfires leading into the biggest snows anyone alive has ever seen? There's hardship in all that, but pride, too, in thriving in spite of it.What I got wrongI said that the Kehr's Riblet double was “one of the oldest lifts in the country.” That's not accurate. It was built in 1964 – very old for a machine, but not even the oldest lift at the resort. That honor goes to Seventh Heaven, a 1960 Riblet double rising to the summit. And that's not even the oldest Riblet double in the State of Washington: White Pass still runs Chair 2, built in 1958; and Vista Cruiser has been spinning at Mt. Spokane since 1956.Questions I wish I'd askedFortune briefly discussed the paid-parking plans landing at Heavenly, Northstar, and Kirkwood next winter. Limited as these are to weekend and holiday mornings, the plans will no doubt spark feral rage in a certain group of skiers who want to pretend like it's still 1987 and Tahoe has not changed in an unsustainable way. The traffic. The people. The ripple effects of all these things. I would have liked to have gotten into the motivations behind this change a bit more with Fortune, to really underscore how this very modest change is but one way to address a huge and stubborn problem that's not going anywhere.  Why you should ski Heavenly, Northstar, and KirkwoodFrom a distance, Tahoe can be hard to sort. Sixteen ski areas strung around the lake, nine of them with vertical drops of 1,500 feet or more:How to choose? One easy answer: follow your pass. If you already have an Epic Pass, you have a pre-loaded Tahoe sampler. Steep and funky Kirkwood. Big and meandering Heavenly. Gentle Northstar. The Brobots will try steering you away from Northstar (which they've glossed “Flatstar”) or Heavenly (too many traverses). Ignore them. Both are terrific ski areas, with endless glades that are about exactly pitched for the average tree skier. Kirkwood is the gnarliest, no question, but Northstar (which is also a knockout parks mountain, and heavily wind-protected for storm days), and Heavenly (which, despite the traverses, delivers some incredible stretches of sustained vertical), will still give you a better ski day than 95 percent of the ski areas in America on any given winter date.It's easy to try to do too much in Tahoe. I certainly did. Heavenly especially deserves – and rewards – multiple days of exploration. This is partly due to the size of each mountain, but also because conditions vary so wildly day-to-day. I skied in a windy near-whiteout at Kirkwood on Sunday, hit refrozen crust that exiled me to Northstar groomers on Tuesday, and lucked into a divine four-inch refresh at Heavenly on Wednesday, gifting us long meanders through the woods. Absolutely hit multiple resorts on your visit, but don't rush it too much – you can always go back.Podcast NotesOn Schweitzer and Stevens Pass' joint ownerFortune and I discuss an outfit called Harbor Resorts, which at one time owned both Stevens Pass and Schweitzer. I'd never heard of this company, so I dug a little. An Aug. 19, 1997 article in The Seattle Times indicates that the company also once owned a majority share in Mission Ridge and something called the “Arrowleaf resort development.” They sold Mission in 2003, and the company split in two in 2005. Harbor then sold Stevens to CNL Lifestyle Properties in 2011, where it operated under Karl Kapuscinski, the current owner, with Invision Capital, of Mountain High, Dodge Ridge, and China Peak. CNL then sold the resort to the Och-Ziff hedge fund in 2016, before Vail bought Stevens in 2018 (say what you'd like about Vail Resorts, but at least we have relative certainty that they are invested as a long-term owner, and the days of private-equity ping pong are over). Schweitzer remains under McCaw Investment Group, which emerged out of that 2005 split of Harbor.As for Arrowleaf, that refers to the doomed Early Winters ski area development in Washington. Aspen, before it decided to just be Aspen, tried being Vail, or what Vail ended up being. The company's adventures abroad included owning Breckenridge from 1970 to 1987 or 1988, developing Blackcomb, and the attempted building of Early Winters, which would have included up to 16 lifts serving nearly 4,000 acres in the Methow Valley. Aspen, outfoxed by a group of citizen-activists who are still shaking their pom-poms about it nearly four decades later, eventually sold the land. Subsequent developers also failed, and today the land that would have held, according to The New York Times, 200 hotel rooms, 550 condos, 440 single-family homes, shops, and restaurants is the site of exactly five single-family homes. If you want to understand why ski resort development is so hard, this 2016 article from the local Methow Valley News explains it pretty succinctly (emphasis mine):“The first realization was that we would be empowered by understanding the rules of the game.” Coon said. Soon after it was formed, MVCC “scraped together a few dollars to hire a consultant,” who showed them that Aspen Corp. would have to obtain many permits for the ski resort, but MVCC would only have to prevail on defeating one.Administrative and legal challenges delayed the project for 25 years, “ultimately paving the way to victory,” with the water rights issue as the final obstacle to resort development, Coon said.The existing Washington ski resorts, meanwhile, remain overburdened and under-built, with few places to stay anywhere near the bump. Three cheers for traffic and car-first transportation infrastructure, I guess. Here's a rough look at what Early Winters could have been:On Stevens Pass in late 2021 and early 2022Fortune spent 20 years, starting in the late 1970s, working at Stevens Pass. Last year, he returned on a special assignment. As explained by Gregory Scruggs in The Seattle Times:[Fortune] arrived on Jan. 14 when the ski area was at a low point. After a delayed start to the season, snow hammered the Cascades during the holiday week. Severely understaffed, Stevens Pass struggled to open most of its chairlifts for six weeks, including those serving the popular backside terrain.Vail Resorts, which bought Stevens Pass in 2018, had sold a record number of its season pass product, the Epic Pass, in the run-up to the 2021-22 winter, leaving thousands of Washington residents claiming that they had prepaid for a product they couldn't use. A Change.org petition titled “Hold Vail Resorts Accountable” generated over 45,000 signatures. Over 400 state residents filed complaints against Vail Resorts with the state Attorney General's office. In early January, Vail Daily reported that Vail's stock price was underperforming by 25%, with analysts attributing the drop in part to an avalanche of consumer ire about mismanagement at resorts across the country, including Stevens Pass.On Jan. 12, Vail Resorts fired then-general manager Tom Pettigrew and announced that Fortune would temporarily relocate from his role as general manager at Heavenly Ski Resort in South Lake Tahoe, California, to right the ship at Stevens Pass. Vail, which owns 40 ski areas across 15 states and three countries, has a vast pool of ski industry talent from which to draw. In elevating Fortune, whose history with the mountain goes back five decades, the company seems to have acknowledged what longtime skiers and snowboarders at Stevens Pass have been saying for several seasons: local institutional knowledge matters.Fortune is back at Heavenly, of course. Ellen Galbraith is the resort's current general manager – she is scheduled to join me on The Storm Skiing Podcast in June.On Hugh and Bill KillebrewFortune and I touched on the legacy of Hugh Killebrew and his son, Bill. This Tahoe Daily Tribune article sums up this legacy, along with the tragic circumstances that put the younger Killebrew in charge of the resort:By October of 1964, attorney Hugh Killebrew owned more than 60 percent of the resort. … Killebrew was a visionary who wanted to expand the resort into Nevada. Chair Four [Sky] allowed it to happen.In the fall of 1967, [Austin] Angell was part of a group that worked through storms and strung cable for two new lifts in Nevada. Then on New Year's Day, 1968, Boulder and Dipper chairs started running. Angell's efforts helped turn Heavenly Valley into America's largest ski area. …On Aug. 27, 1977 … Hugh Killebrew and three other resort employees were killed in a plane crash near Echo Summit.Killebrew's son, Bill Killebrew, a then-recent business school graduate of the University of California, was one of the first civilians on the scene. He saw the wreckage off Highway 50 and immediately recognized his dad's plane. …At 23, Bill Killebrew assumed control of the resort. A former youth ski racer with the Heavenly Blue Angels, he learned a lot from his dad. But the resort was experiencing two consecutive drought years and was millions of dollars in debt.Bill Killebrew began focusing on snowmaking capabilities. Tibbetts and others tinkered with different systems and, by the early 1980s, Heavenly Valley had 65 percent snowmaking coverage.With a stroke of good luck and several wet winters, Bill Killebrew had the resort out of debt in 1987, 10 years after bankruptcy was a possibility. It was now time to sell.Killebrew sold to a Japanese outfit called Kamori Kanko Company, who then sold it to American Skiing Company in 1997, who then sold it to likely forever owner Vail in 2002.When he joined me on The Storm Skiing Podcast in 2021, Tim Cohee, current GM of China Peak, called Bill Killebrew “the smartest person I've ever known” and “overall probably the smartest guy ever in the American ski industry.” Cohee called him “basically a savant, who happened to, by accident, end up in the ski business through his dad's tragic death in 1977.” You can listen to that at 26:30 here.On Sierra-at-Tahoe and the Caldor FireMost of the 16 Tahoe-area ski areas sit along or above the lake's North Shore. Only three sit south. Vail owns Heavenly and Kirkwood. The third is Sierra-at-Tahoe. You may be tempted to dismiss this as a locals' bump, but look again at the chart above – this is a serious ski area, with 2,000 acres of skiable terrain on a 2,212-foot vertical drop. It's basically the same size as Kirkwood.The 2021 Caldor Fire threatened all three resorts. Heavenly and Kirkwood escaped with superficial damage, but Sierra got crushed. A blog post from the ski area's website summarizes the damage:The 3000-degree fire ripped through our beloved trees crawling through the canopies and the forest floor affecting 1,600 of our 2,000 acres, damaging lift towers, haul ropes, disintegrating terrain park features and four brand new snowcats and practically melted the Upper Shop — a maintenance building which housed many of our crews' tools and personal belongings, some that had been passed down through generations.The resort lost the entire 2021-22 ski season and enormous swaths of trees. Here's the pre-fire trailmap:And post-fire:Ski areas all over the region helped with whatever they could. One of Vail Resorts' biggest contributions was filling in for Sierra's Straight As program, issuing Tahoe Local Epic Passes good at all three ski areas to eligible South Shore students.On wind holdsFortune discussed why wind holds are such an issue at Heavenly, and why they seem to be happening more frequently, with the San Francisco Chronicle earlier this year.On the pastI'll leave you with this 1972 Heavenly trailmap, which labels Mott and Killebrew Canyons as “closed area - dangerous steep canyons”:Or maybe I'll just leave you with more pictures of Heavenly:The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 40/100 in 2023, and number 426 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane, or, more likely, I just get busy). You can also email skiing@substack.com. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

Adventure begins where certainty ends. In this inaugural episode of Mind the Track recorded at PowBot's family “cabin” in Tahoe Donner (pardon the mic bumps!), PowBot and Trail Whisperer dive into the meaning behind the show's title, why they decided to start a podcast and where they plan to go with the show.

In this episode of the First 99 Gear Review, I sit down again with our very own Greg Larkin for Part 2 of his Winter Off-Season Cross Training Plan. During Part 1 we dug into Greg’s indoor workouts including rowing on the Concept2 and Zwift virtual bike racing on his smart trainer. In Part 2 we head to the White Wonderland for some full body winter cross training activities.As mentioned in the last episode Greg was born in Upstate NY and moved to New Hampshire as a kid. Snow sports go back many generations in the Larkin Family tree with both his grandfathers being avid snowshoers with Forlorn Hope style snowshoes. Greg was always a bike race at heart, but he learned at a young age the value of off-season cross training. It started one Christmas when his parents bought the entire family cross country (XC) snow skis. Greg and his family lived in rural New Hampshire. He and his dad would go out for long XC ski day trips in the nearby town forest. This is when he first learned of the BONK. Cycling is very leg-centric but XC skiing is a full body workout (legs, core, back, and arms). New Hampshire terrain is much different than here in CA. Up in the White Mountains the peaks are much lower in elevation, 4k to 6k feet with plenty of rolling hills in the 1K to 2K feet elevation range. You do not have to worry about altitude acclimation; it’s the extreme temperatures of 10 degrees below zero that will take you out. Greg’s early skis were much different than what he rides today. His first set of classical XC skis were 210cm long, waxless, with fish scales, and 3-pin bindings. The fish scales allow you to move the ski forwards but not backwards. Clothing was also challenging as Gore Tex and waterproof outer shells had not been invented yet. People wore lots of wool, Lycra body suits, multiple layers, wind briefs, long-johns, even fleece booties to cover their ski boots. Now we have many more options but layering is still the key. Tune in the episode to hear all of that and more!Lost Ski Areas: http://www.nelsap.org/nh/nh.htmlWikipedia Ski Bindings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ski_bindingCross Country Skiing Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-country_skiing#Skate_skiingAuburn Ski Club: https://www.asctrainingcenter.org/Tahoe Donner: https://www.tahoedonner.com/amenities/amenities/cross-country/Royal Gorge: https://www.royalgorge.com/homeTahoe Cross Country: https://www.tahoexc.org/Tahoe Cross Country Ski Swap: https://www.tahoexc.org/ski-swapCSUS Ski Swap: https://sacstateskiswap.weebly.com/Alpenglow Sports: https://www.alpenglowsports.com/Pacos Truckee: https://www.pacostruckee.com/--Your hosts: Greg Larkin / Mike Turner / Jessica HarrisArtwork/logo by Krista Cavender: https://www.kcavenderdesign.com/ | IG: https://www.instagram.com/kristacavender/Intro/outro music: Joseph McDade - Elevation:

Are we in a buyer’s or seller’s market? The answer depends on your location, but it’s arguably a good time to both buy and sell.There are many great Truckee area homes for sale.  Click here to perform a full home search, or if you're thinking of selling your home, click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation so you know what buyers will pay for your home in today's market. You may also call me at (530) 582-6900 for a FREE home buying consultation to answer any of your real estate questions.A lot of my clients often ask, “Are we currently in a buyer’s or a seller’s market?”Right now in the Tahoe-Truckee area, the answer depends on which neighborhood you’re looking in. For example, in Lahong, there are more than 22 great homes for sale, and about two to four are selling every month. The same is true for some of the high-end homes in Tahoe-Donner and around the lake.If you’re looking for a high-end property, it’s definitely a buyer’s market. If you’re a first-time homebuyer looking in the $400,000 to $500,000 range, you’ll face a lot of competition, so that price point is definitely a seller’s market.Our current inventory is about 12% less compared to where it was at this time last year. Supply is down, but there is still quite a good selection of homes on the market. Inventory isn’t quite low enough to cause prices to spike—they rose 5% from January to March, but they’ve since stabilized and are now what’s keeping our market level. Interest rates are still very low as well, especially on jumbo properties, and some of our clients are still getting rates between 4% and 4.25%.“Supply is down, but there is still quite a good selection of homes on the market. ”To summarize, it’s not only a great time to buy, but it’s also a great time to sell because you’re selling in a market where buyers can get incredible rates on their loans. We’re still about 10% below our peak pricing, so buyers should be aware that we still have quite a ways to go in terms of appreciation.As a seller, you need to pay attention to what other homes are selling for and make sure yours stands out in terms of its condition. As always, listen to your Realtor and stage your home as best you can to attract the best buyer possible.If you have any other questions about our Tahoe-Truckee market or are thinking of buying or selling a home, don’t hesitate to get in contact with me. I’d love to help you!

How do you know when the best time is to put your home on the market? There are three important factors to consider.There are many great Truckee area homes for sale.  Click here to perform a full home search, or if you're thinking of selling your home, click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation so you know what buyers will pay for your home in today's market. You may also call me at (530) 582-6900 for a FREE home buying consultation to answer any of your real estate questions.When is the best time to sell your house in the Truckee-Tahoe area? There are a few factors to consider: 1. What percentage of homes are selling on a monthly basis? In March and April of last year, over 18% of homes on the market actually went into escrow. In August, 20% of homes went into escrow. That number dropped to 18% in September but jumped back up to 22% in November. In short, March, April, August, and November had the highest percentages of homes in escrow last year. That number can shift depending on your neighborhood. For example, last March in Tahoe Donner, 75% of homes on the market went into escrow. Inventory is incredibly low in Tahoe Donner, which is why the percentage of home sales is so high. So far this year, inventory remains low. Last April, Tahoe Donner had 58% of homes on the market enter escrow. That number dropped to 11% in May because more people put their homes on the market. As a result, you can expect inventory in Tahoe Donner to go up again this May. The percentage of homes sold went back up in November of 2016.Overall, keep in mind that spring and fall have a higher percentage of homes go into escrow. 2. What is the average selling price? Between January and May, the average sales price in our area was $808,000; from August through December, the average price dropped to $776,000. Prices go up when homes sell in the spring and drop a bit through the second half of the year.“Prices go up when homes sell in the spring and drop a bit through the second half of the year.”In Tahoe Donner, the average price from January through May was $603,000. From August through December, the average sales price dropped to $575,000. Even luxury markets like Old Greenwood experience a similar trend, with an average sales price of $1.88 million in the spring and $1.6 million in the fall. 3. When is it most convenient for you to put your home on the market? Of course, this is the most important factor of all. When does it make the most sense for you to sell your home? When do you need to move? What makes the most financial sense for you? If you have any other questions about when to put your home on the market, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I would be happy to help you!

Over the past year, the average sales price rose in Tahoe Truckee by 8%. We’re now marking a transition from a buyer’s market to a seller’s market.There are many great Truckee area homes for sale.  Click here to perform a full home search, or if you're thinking of selling your home,click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation so you know what buyers will pay for your home in today's market. You may also call me at (530) 582-6900 for a FREE home buying consultation to answer any of your real estate questions.How did October look for the Tahoe Truckee real estate market? Right now, we’re making the transition from a buyer’s market to a seller’s market. Our overall inventory is shrinking—we went from more than 1,000 homes and townhomes on the market at the beginning of last month to just 800 by the end of it. We also saw more than 190 houses and condos come off the market. It’s not uncommon to see frustrated sellers want to take advantage of getting some rental income at the end of the year, so we’ll probably see most of those properties come back on the market in April or May. In the meantime, the sellers that decide to stay the course can take advantage of the low inventory.“Sellers can potentially take advantage of the low amount of inventory.”From October 2015 to October 2016, our average sales price rose 8%. In certain neighborhoods, though, pricing has remained flat or even dropped a little bit. For example, in Tahoe Donner, the current average sales price is $634,000. In October 2015, it was $643,000.Why the fluctuation? With a lower amount of inventory, prices start creeping up. What happens then is that we start getting more inventory, and when the buyer activity doesn’t match that increase, prices tend to flatten out.  If you are interested in capturing this great seller’s market we’ll be experiencing from now through the end of March, please don’t hesitate to call me or shoot me an email. I’m happy to help!

The fall is a great time to buy and sell real estate in Tahoe/Truckee. Inventory is low, and buyers and sellers alike are looking to get a deal done soon.There are many great Truckee area homes for sale.  Click here to perform a full home search, or if you're thinking of selling your home,click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation so you know what buyers will pay for your home in today's market. You may also call me at (530) 582-6900 for a FREE home buying consultation to answer any of your real estate questions.The fall is one of my favorite times to buy and sell real estate. Inventory has started to drop off, and buyers who are purchasing seem more motivated in getting a deal done before the winter. The same goes for sellers.“Inventory has started to drop off.”Right now, we have 1,002 homes on the market in Tahoe/Truckee, with 626 of them being single-family homes. This number is actually up from last year, when there were only 473 homes for sale. The average sales price right now is $950,000, which is up significantly from the average of $849,000 that we saw at this time last year. That’s a big jump. In certain neighborhoods, we are seeing even more interesting trends.Last year during the month of September in Tahoe Donner, we saw 23 homes sell. Last November, we saw 30 home sales in Tahoe Donner. This last month, we had 38 properties sell. With only 70 homes currently on the market, this is great news for sellers in Tahoe Donner. In Lahontan, there were over 25 homes for sale last year. Right now, there are only 15 homes for sale there. Inventory in certain markets is dwindling down to almost nothing. If you are a buyer right now, there are some really good deals. There are sellers out there who would really like to get a deal done before winter. As a seller in this market, your competition is way down.  If you’re interested in buying or selling in the Tahoe/Truckee area, don’t hesitate to give me a call or send me an email. I would love to hear from you.

There are many great Truckee area homes for sale.  Click here to perform a full home search, or if you're thinking of selling your home,click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation so you know what buyers will pay for your home in today's market. You may also call me at (530) 582-6900 for a FREE home buying consultation to answer any of your real estate questions.What’s happening with the Tahoe-Truckee real estate market for the month of June 2016?Right now, there are 682 homes for sale in the area, with 86 having already been sold for the month. Basically we have an eight month supply of inventory of existing homes for sale. During the same time period, we also had 152 homes come on the market. As you can see, we’re having more homes come on the market than are selling, which is typical for this time of year. Last year we had 103 homes sell during June. The average days on market during that period was 75, whereas this year that number is 81. What’s happening with the prices right now? Overall, our sales are up over 11%, so we’re seeing 11% more homes sell than we did last year. Our average is up 2% and the median price is up 6%. As we’ve previously discussed, certain neighborhoods are hot right now in the Tahoe-Truckee area. For example, the sales in the Tahoe-Donner neighborhood are up 31%, and the average sales price is up 3%. Over in our Truckee neighborhoods, sales are up 38%, and the average price is up 5% over last year. If you have any questions regarding your particular neighborhood or anything real-estate-related, feel free to give me a call or send me an email.

There are many great Truckee area homes for sale.  Click here to perform a full home search, or if you're thinking of selling your home,click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation so you know what buyers will pay for your home in today's market. You may also call me at (530) 582-6900 for a FREE home buying consultation to answer any of your real estate questions.Today I wanted to touch on what’s hot and what’s not in the real estate market up here in the Truckee Tahoe area.Overall right now, our sales are down about 10% with the average price up about 7% in Tahoe, but these numbers are quite different in certain neighborhoods. In Tahoe Donner right now, sales are up over 15% right now and the average price is also up 7%. Out in the Martis Valley, the sales are also up around 14% percent and the average sales price up about 6% as well.Over in the Glenshire area and the surrounding neighborhoods, sales are down about 31%, but the average price is up 14%. Why is this? Because the inventory is so low right now that prices are being driven up. If you have a house in say, Tahoe Donner, priced between $700,000 and $1.3 million, we’re seeing bidding wars, multiple offers, a lot of activity and a lot of demand. If you have a house in the Glenshire market and you’re thinking about selling - wow! Now is the perfect time. So what’s not hot right now? Homes that are a little dated, need some repairs, aren’t presented well, or are priced higher than the competition tend to sit on the market right now. Even nice, beautiful homes that are priced even $15,000 more than the competitively-priced homes are also sitting on the market. If you’re a buyer, I’d highly encourage you to make offers on those types of properties. Even if they’re a little out of price range, take a look because there’s not a lot of competition for them.If you’re interested in buying, we’d love to represent you in your search! Send us an email or phone call and let’s get started today!

www.LivingYourMountainDream.com With over 31 years of local knowledge of the Tahoe and Truckee area and over 9 years experience as a Realtor® at Dickson Realty, John's goal is to make your mountain home dreams a reality. As a Tahoe Donner resident, he is happy to show you the finer cabins and properties in the Tahoe-Truckee basin. His professional expertise also includes 20 years experience in the electronics industry, licensed professional mechanical engineer in California, and electronics in the U.S. Coast Guard (Vietnam era vet). www.NevadaRealEstateRadio.com