Sugar Bowl Conditions – Welcome Back Winter! As I drove out to Sugar Bowl from Tahoe City on Sunday morning, I knew I had made the right call. The traffic on 89 heading into Squaw and Alpine looked quite stressful while and the mellow drive to Sugar Bowl via old 40 was peaceful and scenic. As expected, the crowds were very manageable and the longest wait for a chair all day wasn’t even 5 minutes. This makes going bell to bell a bit more challenging… Conditions Report Guy LaDouche | March 2, 2015 0 Comments
Alpine Meadows Conditions – The Return of Wintery Snow! After a very wet weekend of skiing on Saturday and Sunday, Monday and Tuesday felt like the return of wintery conditions. Two systems came through Tahoe from Friday-Monday and dropped a total of 18″ at Alpine Meadows and “26 at Squaw. Sunday was the worst day of the storm with temps in the 40s and heavy precip most of the day. By Monday, the temps dropped and we had legit snow falling from top to bottom all day. Many of the large bumps that had formed around the mountain were filled in and smoothed out by the new snow. Conditions Report Guy LaDouche | February 10, 2015 7 Comments
Sugar Bowl Conditions Report – Beautiful June-uary Day It was a beautiful drive up the old Highway 40 past a cloud covered Donner Lake to get to Sugar Bowl on Monday morning. We probably arrived earlier than we should have, as everything had frozen over the night before. By about 10:30, the east facing slopes of Mt. Disney were starting to soften up. It was warm out with temps in the 50s; a full on June-uary day. The best runs of the day were on Market Street, East Face, Nancy’s Couloir and Sugar Bowl. We went back to check on Mt. Lincoln after lunch, but most everything was still frozen solid. Back to Disney we went, which was still riding […] Conditions Report Guy LaDouche | January 20, 2015 1 Comment
New Zealand Backcountry Conditions Report: The Stunning Summit of Mt. Ruapehu They say the best time to ski at Turoa is in the spring, and I’d have to agree. While the lower mountain is looking quite grim, everything on the upper mountain still has amazing coverage. Ripping groomers in the morning followed by soft corny goodness off-piste by 11am make for lots of legs days this spring. From the summit, you can see into the epic crater lake that sits atop Mt. Ruapehu, which is an active volcano. The run down to the […] Conditions Report Guy LaDouche | October 16, 2014 3 Comments
New Zealand Conditions Report: ‘Turoa Pow’ and Spring Skiing After being closed 3 out of 4 days (Fri, Sat, Mon) due to poor weather earlier in the week, Mt. Ruapehu got a much needed refill of the white stuff. Turoa got close to 30 CMs (just shy of a foot) during the closures, which gave us a really fun mini pow day on Sunday and two highly wind loaded spring days on Tuesday and Wednesday. Sunday had the best snow conditions of the week as we had a nice soft, wintery layer to ski on. Big Bowl, Little Bowl […] Conditions Report Guy LaDouche | September 24, 2014 0 Comments
Turoa, New Zealand Conditions: Bluebird Cookies and Cream After being closed for 3 days in a row due to wind and rain, I was quite skeptical as to what the conditions would be like today. My heart would break each of the last 3 days as I would look at the time lapsed images of the Turoa webcams to see the white snow melting away and exposing that jagged, volcanic rock. Lucky for us, the temps dropped […] Conditions Report Guy LaDouche | August 5, 2014 0 Comments
Mt. Ruapehu, New Zealand Weekend Conditions: Bluebird Sandwich with a Cloudy Filling Ruapehu Alpine Lifts (RAL) operates two ski areas on Mt. Ruapehu: Turoa and Whakapapa. Here are some key differences between the two: Whakapapa is on the north-western slopes of Mt. Ruapehu and gets more sun exposure than Turoa. They are the largest ski area in New Zealand. Turoa is on the south-western slopes of Mt. Ruapehu and gets more snow than Whakapapa. They have […] Conditions Report Guy LaDouche | July 27, 2014 0 Comments
Turoa, New Zealand Conditions Report: Best Day Yet, More Snow Coming! There were smiles all around on our first chair of the day today. I’m pretty sure I heard shouts of “Yewwwwwwww!!!” and “Winning!” on my first ski down. After a late start due to road closures, I was on the chair by 10am with a bright blue sky. There were 15 cms (that’s 5.9 inches for you ignorant Americans) of fresh, 10% moisture content, white gold […] Conditions Report Guy LaDouche | July 21, 2014 0 Comments
Turoa, New Zealand Conditions Report: Solid Terrain & Snow on the Way It was a beautiful bluebird day at Turoa. Conditions still fall into the ‘early season’ category, but the skiing was fun and there was plenty of good snow around. A big thank you goes out to the snowmaking crew who have been working around the clock to get as much terrain opened as possible. After picking my way through a rocky […] Conditions Report Guy LaDouche | July 18, 2014 0 Comments
Want to become a better skier? Turoa Report, New Zealand Turoa Ski Area, located in the center of New Zealand’s North Island, lives on Mt. Ruapehu in Tongariro National Park. They opened a week late due to lack of snow, and since then, we’ve seen some snow, rain, gnarly winds, and runs filled with ice and rock. Needless to say, I’m in love… Conditions Report Guy LaDouche | July 9, 2014 7 Comments
Spring Skiing – Alpine Meadows Closing Weekend Report It was a bittersweet ending to a season with many ups and downs. Alpine Meadows was open for their final weekend of operations, running Roundhouse and Summit chairs. Sadly, Summit never opened on Sunday due to high winds at the top of Alpine. The few inches of snow that fell overnight are still […] Conditions Report Guy LaDouche | May 12, 2014 3 Comments
Alpine Meadows Conditions Report: 2″ of New Snow & No Lines Yeseterday With a spotty backcountry outlook and no resorts open in Tahoe mid-week, we decided to check out what Alpine meadows was like with the 1-2″ of new snow. I had skied Alpine on Sunday, so I knew that the coverage would be good still. We skinned up the easy way along Hot Wheels chair, through the Bakery, and then up […] Conditions Report Guy LaDouche | May 7, 2014 3 Comments
1 Shot @ The Chimney, Bluebird Pow, Crud, & Groomers | Squaw Valley USA Powder Day Report: Dare I say it was the best day of the season? Almost. Was it one of the most fun days I’ve had all year? Hell yes. We got a little bit of a late start and took our first run at 10am. Big mistake. We had amazing spring pow for our first run, but I gave myself a nice slap in my own face for not getting here by 9am. Siberia and the Palisades were going off first thing in the morning and we saw some nice […] Conditions Report Guy LaDouche | April 23, 2014 7 Comments
Bluebird Pow! Squaw Conditions Report – 3/30 Hands down, it was the best day of the season at Squaw/Alpine (so far). We were greeted with a beautiful bluebird pow day and some pretty massive lines on KT and the Funi. With all of the meaningful upper mountain terrain closed the day before, there was a good 2 feet of fresh waiting for us above 8,000 feet. After […] Conditions Report Guy LaDouche | March 31, 2014 13 Comments
Wintery Snow! Squaw Conditions Report and Photo Tour – 3/11 The sun was out and the wind was blowing for a beautiful blue bird Tahoe day today. With 4″ of new snow at the peaks and most of the good upper mountain terrain closed on Monday, we hit Headwall and Granite hard all morning. There was definitely amazing snow to be skied all over the place, but with the heavy winds, icy patches were prevalent as well. You really had to be on top of you game to transition between the chalky goodness and the icy madness between turns. We found the best […] Conditions Report Guy LaDouche | March 12, 2014 2 Comments
Big Mountain Ski Ballet | Jackson Hole Conditions Report – March 9th So today was just a one run day… one of the most incredible runs of my life. Big props to the Jackson Hole Tram, which helped us out with 4,139 feet of elevation gain in 12 minutes. From there, we hiked up above Headwall and dropped into Granite Canyon. I was a bit skeptical as we were hiking up because I saw how soft and melty the snow was getting the day before, but Granite Canyon seems to get some nice protection from the sun and the snow quality back there was amazing. We had about 4,000 feet of amazing wind blown powder […] Conditions Report Guy LaDouche | March 10, 2014 1 Comment
Jackson Hole Conditions Report – March 8th For the first time this season, I felt like I was legitimately in a real winter ski area. Driving into the town of Jackson late the night before, I was blown away by the amount of snow on the ground and the scale of the mountains. The blue skis this morning only made me that much more excited to see […] Conditions Report Guy LaDouche | March 9, 2014 0 Comments
Alta, UT Conditions Report – March 7th The Tahoe exodus continued today with a stop at Alta. We were giddy with excitement when we pulled up, as they got a fresh 5″ overnight. The sun poked through a few times during the day, which made for some great visibility in between some light snow flurries. Our best runs of the morning were from short hikes up to the top […] Conditions Report Guy LaDouche | March 8, 2014 4 Comments
Canyons Resort, UT Conditions Report – March 6th With a warm week and rain in the forecast (and a very flexible boss), we had to get out of Tahoe. The first stop on our tour of snowy places was Canyons Resort. It was so nice to ski on some proper wintery snow again that I don’t think the smile left my face all day. We were able to find nice chalky snow in the trees and some really fun powdery bumps all around the mountain. […] Conditions Report Guy LaDouche | March 7, 2014 0 Comments
Alpine Meadows Conditions Report – Feb 8th Let’s be real – there were a lot of miserable people today at Alpine Meadows. It was cold and snaining, Summit was closed, lines were long, and people were soaked. I was getting texts by 10am that people were heading inside to the bar. I also came to the realization that my gloves and pants are not nearly as waterproof […] Conditions Report Guy LaDouche | February 8, 2014 5 Comments
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