Heavenly

Started: 2024-03-20 20:23:01

Submitted: 2024-03-20 23:26:08

Visibility: World-readable

A heavenly early-spring day-trip skiing; and an unfortunate ski bag mix-up

Santa Cruz is blessed with many things, but easy access to winter sports is not one of them. Geographically the closest skiing is around Lake Tahoe, multiple hours away across the short axis of the state. The two main highways to Lake Tahoe are near capacity much of the time, and it only takes a tiny traffic or weather disruption to cause hours of delays. I thought about flying to Salt Lake City to ski but I couldn't quite convince myself it was a good idea.

It turns out that there are enough people in the greater Bay Area who want to ski that there's a company called Tahoe Ski Trips that arranges one-day and weekend ski trips during the winter season. (The last time I rode a ski bus from the Bay Area they went by the name Bay Area Ski Bus.) I could catch the bus in San Jose at 03:30, ride to Heavenly, and be back at home Saturday night. I didn't precisely want to get up at oh-dark-thirty to drive across the mountain to catch a bus in San Jose, but this was my last good chance to ski this season, and I figured I'd regret not skiing once this season. So I got a seat on the bus, and a one-day lift ticket to Heavenly.

I got up early in the morning on Saturday, the 16th of March to drive across the mountain to San Jose. When I pulled into the parking lot at Tamien Station there was a passenger coach idling in the lot with a handful of cars parked nearby. I joined the small group of people waiting next to the bus with our ski gear. We loaded our gear into the cargo bay under the bus and claimed seats inside. Our host for the ride introduced himself and called our names to check us off his list, and we were off to the next pick-up in San Francisco.

I managed to get some sleep on the bus as we drove up the peninsula and stopped in Potrero Hill to pick up more people, then headed across the Bay Bridge to the final stop at Walnut Creek. (It wasn't until the last stop that I figured out how to recline my seat, which made it easier to sleep. We drove north on 680 to 80, crossed the Yolo Bypass on our way into Sacramento (in the pre-dawn light I saw water flooding the bypass, the result of winter rain storms), and continued east on US 50. East of Placerville the highway shrank to two lanes and climbed into forest burned by the Caldor Fire. From the bus in the early morning light I could see dead trees standing in the snow flanking the highway, burned 40 or 50 feet above the ground, the aftermath of a cataclysmic fire. A few pine trees still lived, their green needles standing out in the black-and-white forest.

I ate my breakfast (shelf-stable milk carefully poured into a container of granola) as the bus descended towards South Lake Tahoe. The bus parked at the California Lodge base area. I grabbed my gear, put on my ski boots, and walked across the parking lot to the aerial tramway to catch a ride up the mountain.

The base area was still shrouded in shadow when I boarded the tramway. As the tram climbed the sun appeared over the mountains. When I reached the top The morning was crisp and bright, without a cloud in the sky. This was my first time skiing at Heavenly and I tried to orient myself in the ski area. I wasn't sure where I wanted to go but I figured I should head deeper into the mountain while I remembered how to ski and figured out where I wanted to ski. I rode the Powderbowl Express lift and skied to the bottom of Canyon Express; and at the top of the lift I looked back and saw a stunning view of Lake Tahoe in the distance, under a perfectly-blue sky, above the neatly-groomed ski trails.

I rode Canyon Express twice, enjoying the groomed blue runs as I got used to the snow and remembered my skis (and tried to adjust to the altitude). Then I rode Sky Express twice, climbing up to 10,040 feet for an even-more-commanding view of the snow-covered mountains. On my first run down Liz's I ran into some icy patches between the wind-blown snow. On my second run I followed Skyline Trail to the Nevada side of the mountain, which I'm pretty sure is the first time I've skied into a new state. The mountain had just as much snow on this side, but it looked down further into the dry Great Basin below the snow line, marking a substantial contrast from the view of Lake Tahoe from the California side.

(Here my ability to reconstruct my day skiing based on the resort's proximity scanners on the lifts, as reported in the Epic app, breaks down somewhat, because the timestamps I'm given in the app overlap in ways that are impossible given the lift timings and my memory of what I skied in what order. The times also appear to be mostly in Mountain time, which I suppose is not unreasonable for Vail, a company based in Colorado, except that I'm skiing in Pacific time in California and Nevada.)

I stopped for a snack and coffee at the East Peak Lodge, then dropped into Galaxy for a nice blue cruiser run followed by a very slow lift ride back to the top. I skied Mott Canyon, a steep glade lined with large bumps that was just at the edge of my ability, and returned to easier slopes under Comet Express. This "easier" turned out to be "perfectly-sized bumps on the black-diamond Little Dipper under the lift", which gave me a chance to drill my bump technique on my short bump skis for a couple of runs before lunch.

I stood in a long line on the outdoor patio at East Peak Lodge for an adequate veggie burger, which looked faster than the even-longer-line for the food indoors. It was bright and sunny and the air was pleasant without my scarf or gloves. After lunch I rode Comet a few more times before heading back towards the California side of the mountain.

It was easy enough to get across the state line into California (the lift I had been riding, Comet, ended approximately on top of the state line, which made me wonder about the state regulations involved in operating a ski lift), but to get down to the California Lodge base area was somewhat more convoluted. (Heavenly would benefit immensely from one or two well-placed lifts to connect parts of the mountain that are otherwise difficult to traverse; a lift from Sky Deck to Tamarack Lodge would neatly trim the convoluted route shown on maps to get back to the gondola leading down to the other main California base area.)

I rode Tamarack Express once and then dropped down California Trail to the base of Sky, 500 feet below, for one last trip up that lift. My last lift ride was up Patsy's, 200 feet to the top of the aerial tramway. People were boarding the express lift and the tramway to head downhill but I was up for one last run, which turned out to be large bumps 1700 vertical feet straight down the fall line. This was not the easiest trail I'd skied all day, but it was fun, and got me to the bottom just as the snow was turning to spring slush.

I walked back across the parking lot to the ski bus at 16:00, just as the lifts were beginning to close, with enough time to stow my boots and skis under the bus and change out of my ski pants. The bus departed at 16:30 for the long drive back to the Bay Area. We passed the time with movies on the LCD monitors mounted to the ceiling above the passenger seats.

We followed the same route back home, giving me a second chance to see everything I'd seen on the way up and to snap off a couple of quick pictures looking out the window of the bus, starting with the Caldor Fire burn area.

In suburban Sacramento, on US 50, I saw a giant skeleton looking over the sound wall onto the highway.

The sun set as we drove through Fairfield. We turned south on 680, crossed the Carquinez Strait, and stopped in Walnut Creek to drop off the first set of passengers. We continued west, through the Caldecott Tunnels and across the Bay Bridge, to drop off another group at Potrero Hill, then continued south on 101 to San Jose, the last and final stop for the final group on the bus, including me.

When we reached San Jose my skis were missing from the cargo bay under the bus. (My boot bag was sitting right there, right where I left it.) There was another ski bag that looked a lot like mine (black nylon, but with a green zipper instead of a gray zipper, although the color of the zipper might not be obvious in the pallid yellow sodium-vapor streetlights), which no one claimed. My best guess is that someone grabbed the wrong bag at a previous stop (or, even worse, because I saw multiple bags that looked kind of like mine, we might have a three-way ski bag mix-up).

I didn't see any identifying information on the ski bag or the skis. I had neglected to attach obvious identifying marks to my own skis or ski bag, but it does have a United Airlines baggage tracking tag from the last time I traveled with my skis, which probably includes the version of my name that appears on my official documents, Theodore Logan. (This name is at least somewhat searchable if one is willing to scroll through the Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure fan sites.)

At the suggestion of the host on the bus, I took the one remaining ski bag, because everyone else had left so it must not have belonged to any of them, with the hope that I can find the person who has my skis and trade them back. I emailed the ski bus company and they sent out a mass email, but it's been several days and I haven't heard anything yet.

If by some miracle you reading this page were on my bus and you are accidentally in possession of an extra pair of Rossignol Smash 7 skis you'd like to trade for your skis (this photo below is from 2015, so they're somewhat more beat up now but still ought to be recognizable) email me at ted.logan at gmail.com and we can figure out how to trade.

Next time I go skiing, I'm going to make sure to include luggage tags (and an AirTag) on my ski bags.