We set our alarms for 7 AM, but due to the excitement and two hour time difference, I arise at 6:15. I pop in the shower and get ready for the day. Randy is right behind me and we are ready for some breakfast to prime us for the big day ahead.
We head next door to one of Randy’s favorite spots only to find out that Rosie’s Cafe doesn’t open till 8. Randy ponders a minute and asks me to look up the opening time of Fire Sign Cafe. 7 AM. It’s 6:55 and a 5 minute drive away. God is so good.
As we head south down the West Shore Randy points out some of his old haunts. Thai Kitchen that used to be Humpty’s where he got his first job in Tahoe. Pete ‘n Peters, the big Thursday night hang. Every bar seemed to have a night. Pierce Street Annex was Wednesday, Emma Murphy’s was Friday, Humpty’s was any night that a good band was playing. We pass by the remnants of the Naughty Dog, a vacant lot of cement and weeds. It got torn down, for what reason Randy doesn’t know. But I can tell it’s a damn shame.
A quick Naughty Dog story. Randy tells me of one time where he was working at the hotel (did I mention that Randy worked the valet at the Resort at Squaw Creek? Well he did.) and a yuge snowstorm blew in. Feet of snow. They couldn’t get out & hotel guests couldn’t get in. No real need for valet parkers. Naturally, Randy and his motley crew of 20-something renegades began their bender. They drank all night and into the next day. At some point someone at the hotel got sick of being there and decided to try their luck with their 4WD and snow tires. Randy and some friends piled in the back and they ventured out into the elements. It’s still snowing but somehow the truck managed to make it through and back to Tahoe City.
Straight to the Naughty Dog.
Everyone bellies up to the bar and continues the debauchery. After a few rounds of whiskeys and beers Randy and his roommate realize the only way they are going to get to their house is to hoof it. 6 miles. With full snowboarding gear. On no sleep, no food, and a bloodstream that’s likely flammable. Did I mention it’s still snowing?
Randy & his roommate (who he called Josie Wales, which I’m not sure if he name is Josie, or be bears a resemblance to 1976 Clint Eastwood, or perhaps he is a skilled gunfighter. Who knows) start walking to their house. They stop to grab some food to cook for breakfast when they get back & Randy is apparently in the frame of mind that a dozen eggs is a perfectly fine item to shove into his jacket for the long slog home. On the walk home Josie’s competitive side comes out and the walk turns into a race, replete with numerous lead changes, stumbles, and a smashed carton of eggs. Who would have thought.
They make it to the house with Randy in the lead and just as cuz is headed up the hill to the house he stumbles and falls ass over teakettle into the snow. Josie swoops past him, puts a boot in his back for good measure, and leaps up to the deck to claim victory. A pyrrhic victory it seems, as Randy says they had a full two day hangover after that. It’s probably good for my health on this trip that Randy is off the sauce.
On a semi-related note, Randy said that Josie would hit golf balls out their front door out onto town. Not only did this maniac launch ordnance onto the unsuspecting victims of Tahoe City, read the previous sentence again. Out the front door. He would tee up in the living room and spank balls out the door. He often missed. They had a perfectly good deck to engage in his particular brand of mischief but apparently that didn’t reach the level of chaos that Josie needed. What a lunatic.
Anyways we pull into the Fire Sign cafe and I order a plate of migas and a cappuccino to fuel me for the day. The migas arrive on an absolutely enormous platter, an irresponsible amount of food but it’s so delicious. We finish up breakfast and head back to town to Tahoe Dave’s for some rental skis for yours truly. I chat with Eli behind the counter and after looking through his suggestions I decide on some Blizzard Bonafide 97s. Let’s see how these babies rip.
We head out from Tahoe Dave’s and it’s about 15 minutes to before we turn into Alpine Meadows ski area. It’s the sister resort to Squaw Valley, which is just on the other side of the mountain whose claim to fame was hosting the 1960 Winter Olympics. We pick up lift tickets, which are good for both resorts so we have the option to head over to Squaw if the mood strikes us.
I Came to Ski Dammit, Let's Ski
We chose to hit Alpine Meadows first because the conditions will likely be better in the morning. We are in the middle of full-on spring skiing conditions – warm and sunny during the day, back below freezing at night. When the snow starts to thaw during the day, it creates some excellent soft conditions that are a dream to ski on. First thing in the morning, however, the snow is still frozen solid and can rattle the fillings out of your teeth if you find yourself in the wrong spot. What we’re looking for early in the morning is an area that’s got some sun on it and a higher likelihood of soft snow for ultimate sendage. Our plan is to head to the top and over the backside to the south facing slope. This should have the most sun exposure and our best chance at good tracks.
We ask a gentleman working at the bottom of the hill if the backside is open and he says that it is. We’re in luck. We strap on our gear and head to the Treeline chair. The Summit Express is shut down at the moment due to high winds. Peculiar, because there’s hardly any wind at all where we’re at. Whatever.
We hop on the 2nd chair of the day and share it with a nice young lady named Minnie. Unbeknownst to us, Minnie is on duty. Her jacket is a different style from the other employees on the mountain so we didn’t realize she was working. We find out about a quarter of the way up the lift, however, when her radio squawks that the backside is closed. Bummer. We ask Minnie where she thinks the best conditions will be this morning and she says the runs off the Alpine Bowl chair should be decent so we follow her that-a-way.
About halfway up the Alpine Bowl chair we begin to understand why the Summit Express is shut down. The winds are gusting out of the east and once we clear the ridge to our left we feel it. It’s blustery but not too bad. We get to the top and begin a long traverse over to the Peril Ridge run. On our way over I stop to snap a photo of the scenery. We’re looking out from Ward Peak over the ski area and Lake Tahoe beyond and it’s absolutely breathtaking. As I’m steadily swinging my phone from left to right for a panoramic photo the wind really kicks up. It’s hard to keep my phone steady for the photo. This is some real wind, boy howdy.
I manage to get a decent photo & continue on the traverse to our drop in. The wind picks up even more and starts to pelt us in the face with small bits of ice. I didn’t think anything could ruin that view but an onslaught of ice pellets to the face quickly disavows me of that notion. I want to get down off this ridge as quickly as possible. I maneuver to shove myself over the edge but the wind is so strong it almost blows me backwards. Son of a bitch. I finally manage to get over the top and down I go. The top is still pretty crunchy, but at least I’m no longer standing in the firing line of an airsoft machine gun. We start off on the groomed section of the run then I head over to the side to some un-groomed snow. Bad idea. It’s all big chunks of ice that batter me around. I quickly head back to the groomie and stick there for the rest of the run.
Randy and I rip the Alpine chair a few times then find a nice section of soft snow off the Yellow chair. We decide to ride that a few times then grab some lunch & head over to Squaw for the afternoon. A few runs and a short hike through the parking lot later we’re back at the Focus. We have some water and a banana and we’re off to Squaw Valley.
We make the drive around the mountain and as we pull into the parking lot I realize this place is something different. The mountain, if you could call it that because it’s really 3-4 mountains, towered over us like a West Texas stepfather after a JV football loss. Suffice to say it was intimidating.
Squaw
I didn’t have much time to survey the scene before Randy & I snagged our gear out of the car and started hoofin it towards the rocky prominence. As we approach the main base a fella shouts to us inquiring if we already have our lift tickets. We respond in the affirmative so he asks if we’d like to take the Aerial Tram. There’s no line so Randy suggests we take it because it offers some of the best views on the mountain. We walk into the tram terminal and find ourselves in a large, bare-bones concrete building with about 5 people in front of us. While we wait I do a little research on my phone about this Squaw Valley place.
The resort was opened in 1949 as a tiny ski area with one chair lift, two rope tows, and a fifty room lodge. The “father” of Squaw Valley was a Harvard educated lawyer named Alex Cushing who fell in love with the area after a vacation a few years before. He met and partnered with former University of Nevada skier Wayne Poulsen who had purchased 2,000 acres of the mountain from the Southern Pacific Railroad. Cushing brought capital, connections, and ambition.
Cushing set his sights on what many considered a fool’s errand: hosting the 1960 Winter Olympics. The leader in the clubhouse to host the games was Innsbruck, Austria, with St. Moritz, Switzerland, and Chamonix, France in contention as well. These are world class facilities with history, tradition, and expertise in all things Alpine. There was no way this plucky upstart from the States could possibly upset these titans of winter recreation.
But Squaw Valley’s seeming deficiency was actually its strength. It was a blank slate. Cushing wooed the representatives of the International Olympic Committee in Paris with a scale model of his Olympic development. He modeled the resort after European ski destinations with a swimming pool, ice rink, roller disco, and restaurants on the mountain instead of at the base. In previous Olympic games, the athletes stayed in hotels or with local families, but since Squaw Valley didn’t have any, the first Olympic Village was created.
Because everything was being constructed from the ground up, the games utilized the most advanced technology of the day. It was the first to use artificial ice for the skating rinks and also the first to use electronic timing. Results were calculated using an “IBM electronic computer” that could spit out results in 2 minutes, quaint sounding by today’s standards but a significant feat at the time. The games were the first to be televised live, showcasing Squaw Valley to the world and signaling the rise of US skiing to the level of the Europeans. Walt Disney actually had a hand in the design of the mountain village, which makes sense because this tram building we’re standing in feels like a ride at Disneyland.
After waiting for about 10 minutes the tram arrives. Or so I thought. We shuffle through the gates and the leader of the ride directs us through some sliding doors. I look around and think where the hell is this thing going to go? Well it was a false alarm because this was the preliminary cattle car. An elevator that would rent for \$3000 in Brooklyn. We make the trip up one floor at a glacial pace. In the time that it took us to elevate that 10 feet you’d think that the tram would be waiting and ready for us. You’d be wrong. We do that awkward ski boot walk out of the elevator to another waiting area.
After 5 more minutes we finally see the tram slowly enter its port. What a monstrous conveyance this thing is. The audacity of the engineers who designed it, goodness gracious. Due to Covid the capacity is limited to 27 people, which seems like a lot to fit on a ski lift. But we all get on and it’s quite spacious. Plenty of room for social distancing. Monstrous conveyance indeed.
As we ride up I take in the incredible views. Randy was right as always. I can imagine how nice this must be in the middle of winter, a short respite from the cold and the wind and the snow.
At the top we arrive at an installation called High Camp. This has a massive deck with stunning views of the lake and surrounding areas. I grab a Tahoe Pilz and granola bar and we hang out on the deck for about 15 minutes to snap a few pics and enjoy the views and suds. Randy point out across the mountain to a set of cliffs they call the Palisades. They are 60’ high in some places and people with adrenaline imbalances and rubber knees launch off the cliffs and ski their way down.
A skiing legend and certified crazy person named Shane McConkey blew everyone’s mind once when he backed up 40 feet from the edge of the cliff, got a head of steam, and executed a massive backflip off the escarpment. He was a different animal. He developed some of the technology that make up the skis that I’m cruising today. He tragically died in 2009 during a in a ski-basing accident, a combination of skiing and base-jumping - the pinnacle of daredeviltry. This relaxing, family-friendly activity involves a lunatic skiing off a cliff, unclipping his skis mid-air, flying for a bit with a wingsuit, before ultimately deploying a parachute. This time McConkey’s ski release device malfunctioned and by the time he finally got the binding released it was too late. He was maniac and a pioneer and the skiing community lost a real one with him.
Randy has another story of the Palisades he shares with me about a time he was riding up the chair lift and saw a guy fly off the cliff and stick the landing. Right after the landing there is a ridge and you need to turn quickly to avoid launching into a stand of trees. Well our hero that day either didn’t know to turn or wasn’t able to turn and Randy saw him disappear over the edge of the ridge and a half second later heard a thud and saw the top of a tree sway back & forth like a cartoon. Rand gets to the top of the lift and swings down to see if the dude is alright.
Ski patrol is already there tending to him and Randy pulls up and notices that it’s Stu, one of his coworkers at the valet. He says Stu is in pretty rough shape, a few broken ribs, a punctured lung, and likely a concussion (nobody wore helmets back then). The ski patrol is asking him some questions while assessing the situation, what’s your name, where do you live, how many fingers am I holding up, etc. They aren't getting much out of him because the most Stu can manage at this point is gurgle. Puzzlingly, Randy begins cracking up telling the story, a strange reaction given what we know so far. The story continues that one of the ski patrol blokes asks Stu what he had for breakfast and somehow Stu musters up every ounce of energy in his shattered body and mutters “FRUUUUUUUUITY PEBBBBBBBBBLES.” Randy really got a kick out of that, especially since Stu wound up recovering from the incident.
After the short break we strap on the planks again and resume the shredding. By this point the snow was soft and riding like a dream. We make our way over to the Granite Chief chair, which should offer us some challenging runs. We rip up and down that chair a few times and decide we’ll do one more run here then over to the KT-22 chair. We bomb down the hill and when we meet back up at the bottom of the lift I realize I’ve made an egregious blunder. On the way up the hill I took my phone out to look up the price of the skis that I'm riding. There was no reception near the bottom so I set it down on the chair while I took off my helmet, neck warmer, and gloves because I had worked up such a sweat on the way down. Well during all that fumbling around I forgot that I had taken my phone out of my pocket and set it down on the chair.
Shit.
My mind starts racing. Maybe it stayed on the chair and made it all the way back down and the lift attendant saw it. We ask and she ain’t seent no phone. Shit again. We ride back up the Chief and I look at every chair heading back down the other way to see if it had miraculously stayed on. No luck. We get to the top and ask the lift attendant there if he’s seen a phone and he had not. Shit the third.
We try calling it to no avail, then I suggest Find My iPhone. We should hopefully at least be able to see where it is and most of the terrain under the chair is accessible. Randy hands me his phone and I quickly realize that ain't gonna work - he's got a green text bubble machine. Gross. We decide to head back down to the bottom one more time to see if the lift attendant has seen it. I ski my way down the hill with a flurry of shame and dread running through my head. How the hell am I going to get from the Portland airport to my hotel to Mt Bachelor to Mt Hood to Seattle with no GPS? And how am I going to drive all that way with no podcasts to listen to?
The thoughts keep coming. Do I need to buy a burner so I can call my cousin Joanne to pick me up when I get to Seattle? Did my photos from the trip at least get uploaded to the cloud? I’m going to be really pissed that Apple conned me into buying more space if they didn’t. I guess that’s it for photos for the rest of the trip. Am I going to lose all my saved numbers? How the hell is this happening again two months after leaving my phone in an Uber on my last ski trip? What the hell is the matter with me?
Wait… What’s this I see? Did Randy just give one of the lift attendants a high five? I was a bit slower this run due to my mind being otherwise occupied but when I slide up Randy tells me that they found my phone! Holy shit! I give the attendant a big high 5 and couldn’t believe my luck. She didn’t seem to be as enthused as me for whatever reason. Just another day and another dumbass on the mountain for her I reckon.
We swing around the the lift loading area and the dude working the lift hands me my phone and we’re back on track baby! At least he had a smile on his face when he handed it to me. He says a man in a cheetah costume found it & dropped it off (there were a lot of people dressed up in wacky outfits and costumes, I presume it’s some sort of spring skiing end of season tradition). I kept my eyes peeled for a cheetah costume the rest of the day so I could buy him a beer to thank him but I never saw him. Cheetah man, whoever you are, thank you good buddy.
I looked back at my ski tracking app to see what happened to the phone, it seems that it fell off when I got off the lift at the top and sat there for about 5 minutes when my Cheetah hero scooped it up and dropped it off back at the bottom. I could see the route he took down the mountain too. The dude’s a pro.
Back to the top of the Chief then down to the base area and the KT-22 chair. As we ride the chair I ogle the terrain. Huge swaths of wide open runs with some juicy looking lines. I make sure to pay close attention because there are also quite a few cliffs and runs that could get someone who’s not a professional daredevil into a tight spot. Randy tells me about all the guys who launch off these cliffs when they get a good powder day. Good on them, not for me.
We get to the top and decide to ride down the Saddle run, a relatively straightforward run that’s a bit challenging but nothing too bad. We ride this same run another time or two and before I know it it’s 4 o’clock and the day is done. A solid day by all means but there’s a lot of mountain out there to be explored and tomorrow’s supposed to be warmer. We plan to head straight to Squaw tomorrow morning since it should soften up sooner.
We walk around the base area looking for a place to grab a beer but everything is slammed so we head out to the car for an orange & kombucha. I had applied sunscreen multiple times throughout the day but it seems the sun still won the battle; I look like an old red nosed whiskey drunk. Randy & I swap stories about the day on the slopes and after about half an hour of stretching our legs we pile in the car and head back to Tahoe City.
Refuel
Our plan is to head to a great joint Randy remembers that's run by a sushi chef from Japan. I look it up on my phone and it’s not open. Dadgum. We wander out from the Tree to the Fat Cat Grill next door and plop down at a high top near the bar. I order a lamb burger and a FiftyFifty California Pale Ale. Randy gets the blackened mahi tacos and to our satisfaction both meals were excellent.
As we chow down I notice a young couple pull up right in front of the restaurant. There’s something off about them, they look awful nervous. The gentleman gets out of the car and walks over somewhere next door. I’m slightly intrigued about what’s going on because the young lady in the car is squirming and looking around in a mild panic. After a few minutes the guy returns toting a bottle of wine. I can’t be sure but I think I just witnessed an underage purchase of alcohol. Oh those were the days. In my days of underage alcohol consumption we never bought wine and certainly never bought only one of something unless it was a keg. I guess we weren’t as cultured as these Northern California young’ns.
About 10 minutes later another car pulls into the same spot, this time a couple likely in their mid-30s. The woman behind the wheel is jamming out to something. I mean she is really getting into it. We’ll assume it was Alanis Morissette. Anyways, the guy hops out and walks over to what I’m assuming is the bottle shop where our young friend procured his full bodied red. I make no note of it, until I look back outside and the gal is still sitting there in her red Range Rover. He’s been in there an awful long time, what the hell is he doing? Maybe he’s talking with the proprietor about which vintages are really popping right now. Whatever he’s doing, the gal in the Range Rover starts fidgeting and looking around like the presumably underage girl was a half hour ago. Now what kind of tomfoolery is afoot now.
We get our check and settle up and the guy is still in there. Well now I’m hooked, I tell Randy we need to wait to see what this guy brings back. If it’s not a couple cases of wine I’m going to be disappointed. We sit there so long that I can see a few folks at the host stand start to get annoyed because they thought we were about to leave. The waiter even comes back again to ask if I want another beer and when I say no he gives me a look like what the hell are you still doing here then? Another 5 minutes passes and our protagonist finally returns. Empty handed. Randy and I see the dude’s face and immediately know what just happened. His eyes are as wide as saucers and he’s walking unreasonably fast. Now the energy that the girl was exuding when she pulled up makes complete sense. Squaw Valley isn’t the only place in Lake Tahoe with snow yaknowwhaddimean.
To the delight of the folks waiting for our table we finally shuffle out of the Fat Cat. We venture back across the street to Jakes, where Randy orders a bowl of minestrone soup. Apparently mahi tacos were delicious but not super filling. While he waits for his soup I guzzle down an Elysian Space Dust IPA. I overhear our bartender have a quick discussion with who I presume is the manager to let him know that she can’t serve the girl at the bar. I peer down the bar and see a gal perched over a glass of water drinking from a straw like a giraffe at a watering hole. Just a typical Tahoe Saturday night.
Randy finishes slurping down his soup and we take another quick walk down by the lake. Then it’s back to the Pepper Tree and straight to bed. We have another full day of skiing ahead of us and I have a feeling it’s going to be epic.