~ 
Karen Soo – NSC Trip Director ~
We all know that this year is not exacting a whopping year of 10+ feet of snow in the Tahoe area. We can probably hang up our skis/ snowboards and call it done for the season. I spoke to some people at the resorts and the last time we had a dry spell was in the early 70’s and snow actually started dumping in March and April. I was skiing on Memorial Day last year and NSC member David Miura was skiing on the 4th of July weekend. Are we ever going to get a repeat performance? Is Mother Nature simply angry?
With 20 Nisei Ski Club members, Trip 1 to Heavenly did not cancel. This is our first trip of the season and we were all ready to go. Great food was served on the bus and we had great company. On our way to Sacramento, the bus engine light turned on and Grady felt the bus was not going to make it up the hill. Another bus had to be called in from Stockton and there was slight delay. We rolled into the Blue Lake Inn around 2:30am. At least there was no early spot time. We were only 1 ½ block walk from the Heavenly Gondola. Breakfast was served from the hotel and all I had to do in the morning was to get the lift tickets from guest services.
We met and left the hotel around 9:30am. Most of us skied together on the groom runs because most of the black diamonds runs were closed. This is simply fine, since it was our first ski trip of the season. We need to wake up those legs carefully and not get hurt while doing so. The Blue Lake Inn was kind enough to give NSC a 2 bedroom suite. We had our après ski party there. There was plenty of beer and snacks.
Since I’m not a fan of Tahoe’s casino food or the casino buffet I decided to go to my favorite South Lake Tahoe restaurant called Freshies. http://www.freshiestahoe.com/
So many people are finding out about this gem that there’s usually an hour wait. At 6:00pm, we got 12 people interested in going to Freshies. How are we going to get there? I asked Grady, our bus driver to join us for dinner and see if he can drive the 12 of us there. He had no problem with this plan. There was plenty of parking for the bus and we only waited 45 minutes for our tables. We all sat separately because Freshies is a small place. The group treated Grady for dinner. A thank you for taking us, plus he is such a cool guy.
The next day, everyone checked out of their rooms and met for a full day of skiing.
Basically all of us skied the full day and returned for après ski at the suite at the end of the day. We departed at 5:00pm.
The drive home was smooth and quick. Some chatted about their day and some took a nice nap while we rolled down the hill on Highway 50. We served dinner rather quickly since there were only 20th of us. It definitely makes my tour leading job easier.
We took home some great memories of skiing together.
We have to cancel Trip 2 due to lack of sign ups. The Mammoth trip is still happening, March 23 – March 27, 2012. The bus is not full so we can try to accommodate last minute hop-ons. Of course this is not the order of how we run our ski trips. Everyone is hurting for business so these accommodations can be made.
I hear snow is falling this week. So you know where I’ll be. I’m going to wear test some Marmot clothing and enjoy the runs. Ciao!!!
