We had our annual fireworks celebration at Northstar for New Years Eve. No celebrating for me, just another long, busy night of work.

I took Ryder for a walk on the trail for the first time in awhile. The snow is a little less than knee-deep.

Our skiing is mostly done for the holidays because we’re working a lot of hours, it’s stopped snowing and the slopes are getting too crowded. Also, we’re a little behind on our snow removal.

The snow is only about knee-deep at our house (Glenshire is referred to locally as “the banana belt”). I hear it’s chest-deep in Tahoe Donner, and probably well over your head up in Soda Springs.

We had our first really, really good powder day of the year. The previous storms were either too wet or too wind-affected, or Patrol didn’t have the runs open.

Today was two feet of perfect snow with base coverage top to bottom.

The snow reminded of some days I had working at Alta twenty years ago when the snow and the base underneath it were so forgiving that you felt like you could do anything.

I don’t think I’ve ever carried as much speed through the trees. (It also helps having fatter skis.)

Nancy and I were the first two people down the Backside. Northstar is sooo different from Squaw: we went to wait at the rope and there were about five other people waiting for Patrol to open it. FIVE!

It’s a beautiful thing to be the only soul around and have 1800 vertical feet of untracked powder in front of you.

Yahh, brahh!

Another foot or so dropped since yesterday, still wind-affected and slabby. At least the base is building.

We still haven’t gotten out to Squaw this year. Before, they didn’t have any snow, and now it’s blowing so hard that the upper mountain has been shut down for days.

We have a box of old, old PowerBars, and some of them are wormy. I’m listening to see if I can hear the worms to determine which ones are good.

We got a bunch of snow from the storm yesterday, but it was surprisingly wind-packed and heavy, almost to the point of feeling like crust.

We went to Lookout first thing but got sandbagged because no new terrain has been opened yet—Patrol still only have Washoe and Martis open. I was pining for Stampede to open, but they kept it closed because the runouts are still pretty thin.

These powder days make for long days on swing shift: get up at 5:30 to blow the driveway, get to the hill by 8:00, ski until 12:30, try to take a nap somewhere, work until 11:30 dealing with all the holiday mayhem, get home after midnight, do it again tomorrow.

Nancy has switched to graveyard shift and is coming out after work to ski in the morning. Today was the second, and biggest, of several storms this weekend.

I didn’t get to ski—I spent the day working extra hours for Northstar 40th Anniversary events that were mostly blown out by the storm.

I stood around in the storm for two and a half hours for a Shaun White event that never materialized, then did traffic control for a couple of hours, and then spent the evening fielding a barrage of phone calls because of the traffic mayhem from the storm. Crazy day.

Nancy came out in the morning after her graveyard shift for a few hours of skiing. She called and said it was pretty good on Lookout, so I came out for a couple of hours before work.

By the time I got on the hill, Nancy was leaving and the first storm in a series of storms had arrived. I had a twenty minute ride on the Gondola as they ran it on slow the whole way up because of the wind.

It was blowing like crazy and about 4” of snow fell while I did eleven straight runs in a whiteout on Lookout. I stayed on Lookout because it was the only chair that wasn’t running on slow.

Just as I was leaving, it cleared and the EpicMix photographer made me stop so he could take a picture of my ice beard.

We’ve got a series of storms coming this weekend, so I put the studded tires on Nancy’s truck. I didn’t put them on last year because it never snowed enough to need them.

We were going to ski Squaw today, but the upper mountain is on wind hold as the front moves in.

Ryder seizes on any opportunity to wrestle and play tug-of-war.

Another cold one—it was 6° when we got home last night.

Coldest day yet of skiing, and excellent snow as a result. On our last couple of runs my nose started hurting from the cold like it did when I worked at Alta 23 years ago.

The trees on the summit look like flocked Christmas trees from the little bit of snow we got yesterday.

The rest of the runs on the Backside opened up today; still waiting for the runs off of the Promised Land chair.

We got a few more inches of wet, funky snow up top. The upper runs are decent, but the snow gets pretty stiff on the lower sections.

We came out for a couple of hours on a grayish day. Lookout opened yesterday, but only one run is open and it features a lot of marbly man-made snow.

The Polaris run on the backside has been pretty good lately. It generally doesn’t get groomed, so it has some small bumps to play around on. You can only ski it to the Back Door road cut and then traverse out because the bottom part still doesn’t have enough snow.

The Backside opened, thanks to Northstar blowing about five million gallons of water over the last 24 hours to put snow on the runouts. There are three runs open, with a couple more to follow shortly.

We got some minor freshies on top of old crust in the trees of Promised Land. You can only ski the trees (gingerly) about halfway down. Below 7,500’ it turns to solid shrubbery.

I had a busy night at work: it snowed just enough in the afternoon to make the roads really slick. We had three cars off the road to deal with, plus a burst water line at a condo and the usual other stuff. Nancy said is was 1° last night at TTSA.

It was about 10° last night and didn’t get above freezing during the day. Single digits tonight.

We got out late for a nice little powder day. It snowed lightly throughout the day and by the end there was about a foot of snow up top and a few inches at the bottom.

I think this was our first storm day of the season without rain. We were still scraping ice in places, as this was a cold storm with dry snow that didn’t bond with the old hardpack.

The Gotamas have replaced the Rossi B4s as Nancy’s favorite skis in soft snow.

The new snow did a world of good for the groomers. However, skiing in the trees is still sketchy, with logs, stumps and rocks sticking up everywhere.

Driving home from work last night was a trip. It started snowing at 10:00, and by 11:30 there was so much snow blowing around that we were driving from snow pole to snow pole, focussing on the reflectors on the poles and trying not to get hypnotized by the swirling snow in the headlights.

Another day of sugar on ice. The skiing isn’t horrible, but every run involves one or two patches of sliding out of control on the ice.

Change is coming—it’s supposed to start snowing tonight.

The word is the Backside is going to open sometime this week. I hope so—the frontside is getting old.

The problem is that the base of the lift is at about 6,700’ which has no snow, so they have to blow a bunch of snow on the runouts.

We didn’t come out yesterday, since we generally avoid skiing on Saturdays. Today was more hardpack with piles of sugary snow, along with the Sunday “crowd.”

Nancy found a pristine pair of Volkl Gotamas for $150 at a Labor Day sale at a local ski shop. She tried them out for the first time today.

Even though the skis are not really designed for hard groomers, she thought they skied pretty well.

Oh, and the Zephyr lift and Zephyr Lodge opened today. There’s only two runs open off of Zephyr, as all the other runs drop down too low and run out of snow.

It was a foggy morning in the Shire.

The weather has finally changed from wet and rainy to colder and drier. Unfortunately, the wet snow froze into icy chatter.

Another Oregon-like day, temps around 40° and scattered showers.

No skiing today; I got called in for an overtime shift.

Well, the nice weather didn’t last too long. Scattered sprinkles during the day, and then pouring rain in the evening.

Since there’s no snow around the house, Nancy rode her bike to work. Everyone thinks she’s crazy. Can’t disagree there.

I thought the wet snow from yesterday would turn to crust, and it did at lower elevations, but the snow up top was really good, probably the best snow so far this year.

We took a bunch of runs through the soft bumps on the runs off the summit.

Oh yeah, and it was sunny, too.

It was so windy that Northstar was the only ski area open today. We didn’t get out until 1:00, lazy us.

Yet another sign that we’re not at Squaw: we took a couple of runs on Vista while they were getting Comstock ready to open. They were spinning the chair and cleaning the seats, clearly getting ready to open it, and yet nobody was waiting in line at Comstock—nobody.

We moseyed over, got first chair at Comstock and got first tracks on a foot of new snow. Took one more run and then had to go to work.

Oh, and it’s still raining at the bottom. There’s basically no snow below 6,800’.