Interestingly, both N* and Weather Channel forecast cloudy conditions for Sat/Sun but both days were blue sky days.
View attachment 35407
@TahoeCharlie Are you giving everyone the finger?
The So Tahoe Vail resorts did not have much blue sky on Sat. At Kirkwood, you felt lucky to get any sun through the clouds to counteract the cold and wind. Heavenly was even cloudier and colder in the PM although winds were a little lighter. Sat. night at 8:40 PM there was a wide-spread power failure, possibly from the wind. We headed to the casinos where parking lot was dark, but some lights and games were running on generator. It was interesting that escalators up were powered, but you had to walk down. Power came back on about 30 min later.
We went to Heavenly Sun AM. Winds were lighter than Sat, but stronger that TahoeCharlie reported at N*. I would have rather headed for Kirkwood, but was not sure I could get two 20-somethings who stayed out late going early enough. They rallied and we made it to Heavenly's Stagecoach base about 9:30, parking nearly at the end of the lower lot. My son and I skied all five chairs (except beginner one) open twice. Groomers were OK with recently opened Olympic probably the best. The non-groomed runs open (Upper Big Dipper, Aries and Little Dipper) were nearly wall-to-wall firm bumps.Picture is entrance to usually groomed Little Dipper run.
We skied it on Sat. in low visibility and I had a little new snow in Dipper Bowl where ropeline ended. We decided to move to Kirkwood. But we ran into more friends of his at Stagecoach lift so we took one more ride on Stagecoach with them before quitting about 11:45.
We picked up our stuff from the cabin and got to Kirkwood about 1. We took four laps on Cornice, skiing both Zachary's and Sentinel twice each. Both had been groomed, but Zachary's was mostly scraped off while Sentinel skied better as it was getting some windsift. We moved to the Reut where we took a couple of laps on Wagon Trail, the only run that was not firmed by the wind or showing a lot of obstacles (Short Spoke under chair). Picture taken on Reut lift.
The Wall started loading about 2:30 after being closed Sat. and until then on Sun. My son missed it and went to Cornice. I loaded it after assuring liftie I'd done it before and that I realized conditions would be more challenging than Cornice. I mostly regretted it as chair seemed to be running a little slow and had a couple of stoppages as I neared the top. The snow had been hammered by the wind and had some of the worst sastrugi I've ever seen. The sastrugi at top was much worse than this picture.
There were voids in snow from wind near the top that your skis if not your whole body could have fit under. I survived the top and found a little blown in snow in the middle before experiencing some of the firmest conditions of the day on nominally blue Buckboard. I rode Cornice, skied Sentinel, then came down chair 7 and was able to find enough snow to not remove skis until I was across road from where I parked.