Squaw Valley recently received around 4-5″ of fresh snow right in time for the christmas crowds to enjoy at least a little bit of soft wintry snow. Everyone I know in Tahoe was hoping for a storm before christmas, and though it was small, we got one. It certainly spiced some things up again for a few days.

The day started out slow. I rode Squaw 1 from the village and made my way to Siberia. Siberia was alright, the groomer off the top was pretty fun, but it was shaved off and a bit icy at the top. I got a call from a buddy that he was at Shirley, so I headed over to Gold Coast and met up with him at the top of Shirley where he proceeded to tell me about a sick double off Granite.

The Granite lift is not actually open at the moment, but access into the granite chief terrain via emigrant is. We skied down to Emigrant and made our way to some cool low tide terrain near the granite chief diving board. This is really what made the day. We were skiing leftover pow/wind buff/dust on crust every time we mad the trek out to granite. It was super fun and the short GoPro video I made makes it seem like a sleeper pow day… Realistically though, it was only half a sleeper pow day. Most of the skiing was to access these small pockets of goodness off granite chief and most of that skiing was over hard pack, or wind affected snow.

That said, it was 100% worth every shitty turn to get those few delicious pow slashes and cliff stomps. If Granite Chief is open through christmas, I highly recommend going out and exploring the vast terrain available out there. Cheers to the start of another year of sliding on snow!