Rich's cousins Jimmy and Greg came out from New York for some California sunshine, so we joined them to ski at Northstar.

After skiing, Nancy treated me to a very special birthday dinner with her friends Norio and Carolyn Laurie, complete with limousine.

Well, I had to get a few turns in on my birthday.

Just a few turns. Mostly we sat in the lodge and reminisced about what it was like to ski when we weren’t so old and decrepit.

After skiing I went to work, but they sent me home early when they found out it was my birthday.

I came out to join Nancy for a few runs. She’s checking how much vertical feet she has—over 700,000’ now.

There was a full moon when I got home, so I tried a time-lapse shot of TTSA.

It’s a little under-exposed, but it was 10° out and I wasn’t willing to shiver any longer.

Our first warm day in a long time. There’s still a lot of snow on our trail, enough that a few people have been bushwhacking on XC skis.

Leesa came out in the morning to rip around Northstar with Nancy. This was Leesa’s second day out, and she skied straight through to a little after noon.

Nancy has another month on graveyard. Her goal is to have a million vertical feet of skiing before she goes to day shift.

We drove down to Heavenly with Mark for the day, my first time skiing there.

Nancy kept calling me the “Heavenly virgin.” She got a kick out of saying that for some reason.

Mark came up for a couple days of skiing. We spent the day cruising the groomers at Northstar, which are in great shape, at least in the morning before they get scraped off.

Nancy accepts the challenge of Challenger, with Squaw Valley in the background.

I got my ice skates out for some laps around the rink at Northstar on my lunch break. One advantage of cold temps: the ice is fast.

Yet another cold day, negative temps in the morning warming up to the low 20s. It was -17° at TTSA when Nancy left at 7:00.

We watched a Care Flight take off with an unlucky passenger from a wreck in the flats at the top of Jibboom. Care Flights are not just for head and spine injuries any more—they also use them for broken femurs and pelvises.

The cold spell persists with the coldest night so far.

Our thermometer is not accurate—it’s actually about -10° or so at the house. The official low was -22° for the shivering town of Truckee, not far off the all-time record low of -28°.

Nancy said it was -25° at TTSA when she left in the morning to go skiing.

I squeezed in a few turns before work on a Saturday. Despite the large crowd, the lines were small—I think they were hiding from the cold.

The snow quality has degraded with the warm day on Wednesday followed by another cold period. The groomers aren't too bad, but the bumps are very scrapy.

We finally got out to Squaw, our first day of the year.

It was cold with frequent snow and graupel, mostly flat light, but also a ray of sunshine here and there.

There was about six to nine inches of new snow from last night (two inches at the house), but it got very warm yesterday before the front came in, so the new snow is on a very icy base. You had to be careful on every turn not to get smacked by the ice bumps underneath.

I was lazy, sleeping in, and we didn’t get out until noon. We skied until almost 4:00, getting a few fresh turns here and there. My best run was my last, working the steep spines in Poulson’s Gully.

Here’s Nancy in the Horse Trails off Cornice II.

We had a beautiful, spring-like day, our first warm, sunny day in a long time.

There was a freezing fog in Martis Valley, with Boca Hill sticking up above it.

Hey, who’s the little kid?

The snow is still very, very nice, and the weather was fantastic: mid-30s, cloudless, no wind.

Getting some turns on the Backside.

Mark came out for a few hours before leaving at 12:30 to catch a plane back to SoCal. He says he’ll be back—apparently he likes the skiing thing.

Mark and Trish drove up from O.C. for a couple days of skiing, their first turns of the year. They were going to come up before the holidays, but the conditions were still too marginal at that point.

The snow is staying very good, since we haven’t had a warm day in two weeks. There’s very few ice patches, none on the upper runs.

Nancy insisted that we ski some bumps off of Lookout.

Mark was stoked to finally get some turns in. Here he is on Sierra Grande.

Trish couldn’t believe that, as cold as it was today, this was the warmest it has been in awhile.

My second night in the tent. Nobody around except the groomers on second shift.

The first of two nights guarding the Burton tent, just sitting in it all night making sure the power stays on and nobody walks off with any boards. Burton comes once a year for a weekend of free snowboard demos and product promotion.

The post only has two requirements: stay awake and stay warm. Our recent cold temps have moderated a bit, so the low was only in the mid-teens. Burton provides some heating pads and sleeping bags to help with the staying warm part.

Staying awake involves a lot of sugar and caffeine, as my workday is from 3:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m., then home for a few hours of sleep before doing it again tomorrow.

Yay, my first day off in two weeks. All I did today was walk the dog and take a long nap.

It was especially busy this holiday break, and especially cold. The highs haven’t gotten out of the twenties in two weeks, and the lows, well, it was -4° driving home last night. The rest of the week is projected to be even busier, as local schools are still on break and the cheap ski passes are no longer blacked out.

Nancy has been out skiing every morning, but I haven’t gotten out since the 26th. The snow is staying really good with all the cold weather.

I came in early to go skiing with Nancy and wound up working a double instead, due to several people not showing up for various reasons.

Fifteen hours of answering the phone and problem-solving—happy new year!