kirkwood

Kirkwood, CA Conditions Report: Sendable Cement

Kirkwood is getting caked with boat loads of snow and things just keep on getting better. To hit the break between storms, I drove up 88 early Friday morning in order to get first tracks on chair 6 from the 18″ of fresh that fell overnight. To my dismay, the spur section of 88 had been closed all night. There were several cars parked outside the gate that must have been there all night based on the foot and a half of snow on the roofs.
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Bevan Waite |
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Kirkwood, CA Conditions Report: Side Country Slaying

The nice thing about Kirkwood is that it can be days after a storm has rolled through and you can still find fresh tracks… if you put a little bit of effort in. I warmed up on the main drag down Chair 6 and then promptly moved to the traverse from Sentinel bowl to the palisades. That’s where the real fun started. Surprisingly, even though el nino driven storms originate from the warmer central pacific, it had stayed cold (8 degrees when I arrived in the morning). This preserved the quality of the snow and made for fluffy rides through cut up pow in the early morning.
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Bevan Waite |
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Kirkwood, CA Conditions Report: Knee Deep But Rocky

Tahoe had a killer weekend last week. 40” of snow fell from Thursday to Sunday on average around the area. Kirkwood was particularly amazing on Friday Dec. 11th. Low crowds, and copious amounts of snow were the defining features of the day. I arrived around 10 am and was on the mountain at 10:30. I thought I’d missed my chance to get first tracks anywhere, but I was fantastically mistaken. I followed some skiers on the traverse through Sentinel bowl into the Palisades and to my surprise, the Palisades were barely skied at that point.
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Bevan Waite |
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Noodling the Nooks & Crannies @ Kirkwood – 12/04/15

After a Thanksgiving treat of around 2 feet of cold fluff, December 3rd decided to drop another 6 inches of the white stuff that would ultimately lead to a blue sky powder day on the 4th. The forecast the day prior did call for at least a foot of snow, but sadly, that did not pan out. However, in a severe drought, I’ll ski anything especially after spending Thanksgiving week sipping Mai Tais in Hawaii. This old guy was in dire need of a good ol’ Chair 6 session.

Before lining up with the powder-hounds around 30 mins before opening, patrol told me that a brief rain storm on December 2nd solidified the snow a bit and to ‘be careful of the chunder.’ With that advice in tow, I decided to pump out some much needed pow laps before exploring the technical lines off the Chair.
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Casey Cane |
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Nibbling the November Nectar @ Kirkwood – 11/16/15

After a few seasons of below normal snowfall and word of El Nino knocking on the front door of California, a few early season storms yielded over four feet of early November snow at Kirkwood thus allowing an early opening. Although I had prior commitments and could not make opening day, a local rider Chad Paeglow filled me in on the coverage skiing from the summit of Chair 6 on November 14th, 2015:

The snow was pretty silky unless you hit rocks. Chamoix was money and in the best condition for so early in the season. It has around a 10 foot air out of the choke but had a smooth cushion in the landing. The area around Oops and Poops was still bony especially outside of the gullies. I ended up skiing mostly around Rabbits where I found plently of knee deep turns and even deeper on some landings.
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Casey Cane |
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18-Inches of New Snow at Kirkwood, Calif. Today | 4-18+” of Snow Forecast for CA Today/Tonight

NOAA has been tracking a cold Gulf of Alaska storm as it slides down to California from Alaska all last week. Last night, it hit California dropping 14-18″ on Kirkwood, 6-10″ on Mammoth, and 6-8″ at Sugar bowl.  Kirkwood has been dropping lots of hints that they will likely open earlier than scheduled.  Most likely this week…  Kirkwood has gotten […]
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SnowBrains |
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