A Dirty Dozen
Well, this last weekend was my last trip for snowboarding in Tahoe
this season. I got twelve days of riding in this season starting in
January and I feel like I improved a lot. Unfortunately the last
month or so where I should have been improving the most I was plagued
by an ankle
injury that kept me from pushing too hard.
Keith and I went up on Saturday and rode at
season the backside was closed, but it was fun any way and the snow
was pretty good. We got a start on some high black runs that were
really icy and way too steep for my tastes that early in the morning.
I ended up skidding down most of it and then shakily getting down the
rest. After a few easier runs I had my confidence back. At that point
the snow also warmed up and started being less icy which was nice. At
one point I was doing well and coming down the run I
on when a skier turned right into me as I was moving away from a lift
pole. I had no choice but to turn toward the pole or collide with
him. I turned and then had trouble navigating so I didn’t hit the
pole and tweaked my ankle, again. It didn’t hurt as bad as it has in
the past and was fine by the next morning. I still got tired because
I was over-compensating with my quads for my ankle so we left a little
early and headed to South Lake Tahoe for the night.
Keith and I decided to check out a hotel that is owned and run by a
professional snowboarder, The
Block by Marc Frank Montoya. The setup was everything you’d
expect from a place that caters to snowboarders, from the music
playing in the courtyard to the DJ spinning in the lobby that night.
The rooms were equiped with board pegs, a boot/glove drier, and a
PS-2. Two things the room could have used were coat hooks either by
the board pegs or by the front door to hang our jackets on and some
way to hook an iPod (or other portable music player) to the boom box
in the room (we would have had our own speakers, but they were
non-functional when Keith got them on Friday). The Block is
definitely catering to a party crowd and on the particular night we
were there some of the other guests were up until about 4:30am. While
that normally wouldn’t bother me as I can sleep through most anything
the running around and banging on doors to get into rooms was a bit
annoying. If you want a quite place to stay (and I think they even
say this on the web site) you should go elsewhere. I think the rate
they charge for rooms is great though and I’ll be checking them out
next season. Oh yeah, and young woman working at the desk both days
was incredibly hot and very nice. Always a bonus and incentive to go
back for sure.
On Sunday we decided to go to Alpine
Meadows in North Lake Tahoe. The drive up from South Lake Tahoe
on CA-89 is amazing. I can see why the road closes easily, it’s a
winding and mountainous adventure, but well worth it for the views.
We started off the day on a lower course and while the snow was very
icy it was, as Keith put it, predictable because it was uniform. I
was pretty tentative on it because for me there is still a lot of new
snow conditions that I’ve never ridden on before and I feel not as
comfortable because I don’t want to fall (again with the tentative
nature due to injury). After that we took a chair up to the summit.
At the lift line there was a sign amongst the others that said
“Limited Visibility.” They were not kidding. We pretty much rode the
lift into a cloud and we could see maybe 50 feet out, but even then it
was really hard to make out any details. Once we were strapped in it
was hard to see where the drop off was. I took it slow again because
I really couldn’t see where I was going. By the time I got out from
the low visibility my quads were burning, but that got better as I
rode normally. We then noticed that Scott’s Chair was open and
decided to ride it up so we could get at some of the backside runs.
This is where things got sucky.
I didn’t know where I was going but I did know that parts of the
backside were closed and if I took a wrong turn I’d be hiking out.
Coming down a traverse I lost where Keith went and mis-judged my
position. I ended up biting an edge and slammed chest first into the
icy and hard lip of the traverse. As I lay there, wind knocked out of
me, I was witness to about a dozen people skiing by and not one
stopping to ask if I was okay. I eventually got moving and met up
with Keith. I wanted to keep going so we did about three more runs.
Unfortunately my confidence was shattered at that point and I kept
falling on traverses because I was being too tentative in my motion.
I fell once more getting off the lift when some dick had his ski pole
tips pointed straight at me with his back to the lift. I think that I
twisted my right knee a bit, but it didn’t really start hurting until
I got home. Keith and I made it a half-day and called an end to our
Tahoe season.
I will now rest up and then get back in the gym to prepare for
Zealand. Over all it was a great season. I learned how to
snowboard and I got a lot better than I thought I would. I feel like
I didn’t push myself enough at the end of the season, but I’d rather
have done what I did than injure myself more and not be able to go in
August. There are a lot of places I’d like to go back to in Tahoe,
green runs there,
of the more advanced runs I wasn’t able to do before, and maybe
also like to try Mammoth
next year, but we’ll have to make a long weekend out of it.
