The Displeasure of the Snow Gods

I was in Tahoe the weekend of April 1st and 2nd, and a sequence of events made me think the snow gods were frowning on us.

The first incident was daylight savings time. Saturday night we realized we lost an hour of sleep. While this made us sad, we didn't change our planned schedule. We set two alarms on our cell phones for around 8:00am, planning to get to the slopes by 8:30am or at least 9:00am. One person's alarm went off on time and he turned it off without telling us. My alarm -set for a few minutes after eight- went off. I looked at it, pressed the button to acknowledge it, and after I did so, my phone changed the time to 9-something. Apparently it only changed the time to reflect daylight savings after a user event. grrr... The lifts were running, and all of us were still in our beds.

En route to Sugar Bowl, we stopped at a store to rent quality snowboards. But they didn't have good quality snowboards. And worse, my car got stuck in the snow and ice outside the store. Luckily I was with two people who grew up in the northeast and dealt with these issues frequently. So after some gunning the engine, pushing, rotating tires, and rocking the car, we got free. Well, free but further delayed.

Finally, we headed to a different rental spot the previous shopkeepers said had performance snowboards. As we filled out forms and went to rent, we found the store was out of boots in the size one person needed. We gave up and rather than rent separately decided to rent at Sugar Bowl itself.

Incidentally, on Saturday we also arrived at the slopes late. The weather was slightly inclement so CalTrans was putting in delays to spread out traffic. And since the highway was closed the previous night due to a heavy storm, a lot of people were coming up Saturday morning like us.

I have at least one friend who will blame our bad luck on the fact that we were snowboarding. But whatever the cause, it was a series of unfortunate events.

Still, the trip was great! Very few lift lines. And lots of powder -- great for snowboarding (which is what I chose to do). Tumbles didn't hurt. And the powder is forgiving, letting you make mistakes without falling. And it kept flurrying on and off during the day, which kept the powder fairly fresh in most places. I was surprised how comfortable I was: with a face mask, a down jacket (rather than my usual thin skiing jacket), goggles, and good gloves, I was entirely warm and happy the whole day. At the end of one day I just sat in the snow, laid back and watched the clouds and the lake, and felt very at peace.