Ski Heavenly
As some of you know, I grew up in warm places like Africa and the Mediterranean and never learned to ski as a child. So last Sunday, I redeemed some of my 180,000 United frequent flier miles and took myself to Lake Tahoe to learn to ski at the Heavenly ski resort.
One gets to Tahoe by flying to Reno, Nevada and driving through one of the only two access points into the lake, which is mostly in California. Interesting things about the lake include:
1. It's huge. It is North America's largest alpine lake -- 22 miles long and 12 miles wide. Driving around it is the same as driving around the Beltway. If Squaw Valley were Bethesda, Heavenly is Alexandria. You can stand at the summit of Heavenely and look at Squaw Valley and it would be like being on Wisconsin Ave in Bethesda looking at the Mormon thing in Alexandria.
2. It's deep. If you drained all the water in the lake it would cover all of California to a depth of 14 inches and would take 700 years to refill. It's deepest point is more than 4,600 feet deep, making it the 10th deepest lake in the world. If the water that evaporated off the surface of the lake every 24 hours could be recovered, it would supply the daily requirements of Los Angeles.
3. It's clean. The water is 99.9 percent pure and you can see to a depth of 75 feet.
4. It's sunny. The sun shines 274 days a year on Lake Tahoe.
5. It's high. The lake sits at over 6,000 feet, and then you ski at elevations up to around 10,000 feet. Just walking in your ski boots once you get up to the slopes (at Heavenly they start at around 7,000 feet) makes you totally winded. One beer makes you profoundly loopy. Sitting in a hot tub after flying down three thousand feet and drinking one loopy beer makes you feel like an astronaut....
There are 16 ski resorts at Lake Tahoe, and I was at Heavenly, on the southeast side of the lake, right on the Nevada/California border. The hotel was in California, most of the slopes we skiid were in Nevada. Heavenly is the highest mountain in Tahoe -- 10,067 feet, and covers 4,800 acres of protected National forest. It boasts the longest top-to-bottom run on the West Coast (5.5 miles) and the biggest vertical drop (3,500 feet). It gets 30 feet of snow a year. This week, even though it was mid-April, there was still 4 feet of snow at Heavenly.
The first morning I rode the Gondola up the side of Heavenly to get to the Ski Schools of Heavenly. The gondola goes up a practically vertical face and takes you 1,000 feet up to the bottom of the first runs. It is not a ride for the faint of heart. You stick your skis in bins out on the outside of the gondola and watch the wind bat them around.
My traveling companion was too afraid of heights to sit on the side of the gondola that is furthest away from the mountain, so I sat over there. The views of the lake on the way up are stunning. The Ski Schools at Heavenly are at the top of the gondola in a nice large flat basin. It was brilliantly sunny and the huge fat California conifers ringing the basin were beautiful. My traveling companion ("TC") showed me how to put my skis on, which I did and then instantaneously fell over in a heap before TC's very eyes. I decided to take them off (which TC also had to show me how to do) and wait for my instructor to take care of me. My instructor was Branko from Slovenia who was humorous and very tan. He spent two hours teaching me to ski and then pronounced me a "Level 3 skiier" and sent me off to ski alone. I skiied some beginner slopes by myself and did very well thank you and didn't fall over even once.
After lunch, TC took me up to the top of the mountain, far from the safe Ski School, and pointed me at very steep slope and said, airily, "See you at the bottom!" It was an intermediate slope and Branko had said I was not to ski those under any circumstances.
Indeed, my lift ticket didn't even allow me on the lifts that got you there. I fell down at least 5 times in the first 30 feet. My traveling companion gamely stood by and gave me pointers, sometimes rescuing my poles as they tumbled down the mountain. By the end of the afternoon, I skiied down an intermediate slope without falling down once!In addition to skiing, Tahoe activities include sitting in the hot tub, eating yummy California food, driving around the lake and watching the sun set, learning to play craps at the casinos in Nevada (I rolled the dice but the rest of the game was beyond me), and sleeping.
The last day of the trip, the gondola was closed due to high winds. You could still ski if you could get up the mountain, so they opened the California side of the mountain that had already closed for the season and let brave people work their way across to the Nevada slopes by a combination of skiing and chair lifts. TC and I were in the first tram up to this part of the mountain, so it was us and only half a dozen other people (not including ski patrol and lift operators) on the mountain that day. We lifted and skied up and up and eventually get to the very highest part of Heavenly -- 10,000 feet up, 4,000 above the lake. (For those of you who have been there, we were at the top of the Sky Express chair.) It was beautiful. I decided to ski across the top of the ridge over to a place where I knew I could ski down in to the ski school, because I had a private lesson scheduled with Shane, a very handsome ski instructor from New Zealand. TC went the other way to ski advanced stuff. We agreed to meet later for lunch. I skied pleasantly along the top of the mountain, marveling at the amazing view out over the Lake and over Nevada. It was flat and more like a cross country trail then an alpine slope. I expected to end up in a place I had skiied before and new I could manage. I didn't see anyone the whole time I was on the top of the ridge. Suddenly, however, I emerged from the ridge trail about seven eighths of the way up a very steep intermediate slope. I stopped and looked down the 3,000 foot vertical drop. I looked up to the top of the slope and got vertigo and had to look down at the ground again. I gazed out over Nevada -- I observed that the next highest thing east of me was probably the French Alps. It was beautifully sunny but there were no people anywhere -- no-one on the slope and I hadn't seen anyone for at least half an hour. It was clear from the ice that no-one had skiied this way yet that day. It was silent except for the strong 30 mph wind that had closed the gondola in the first place.
I did not feel that I could ski this scary slope in the wind. But I realized I had few options. I couldn't climb up the mountain in my skis -- it was too steep and windy. I couldn't parachute out over Nevada because I didn't have a parachute. I couldn't stand there doing nothing because what if no-one ever came to this side of the mountain that day ever? I would die. I realized I couldn't ski back and forth across this steep slope because it would take me all day to get down that way and I'd miss lunch and possibly dinner and possibly the last lift down the mountain and maybe even my flight back home. I thought about sitting on my skis and sliding down, but that seemed humiliating and what would my TC say? I stood in a quandry for at least 5 minutes, mildly panicked.
I realized that I was going to have to ski down the mountain. So I pointed my skis down the mountain and went. Miraculously, at that point, I apparently learned to ski.
I flew down the blinding white snow, heading down hill doing parallel turns and whizzing along with my body forward and my poles out to steady me. My hood flew off and my baseball hat came off my head (was attached with clips to my jacket however, so no worries) and the sun was in my face and the wind was blowing and I starting laughing out loud and smilling..... It was like flying. It took me about 15 minutes to get the bottom and I didn't fall down once. I can only assume the mountain gods took pity on me and decided to imbue me with skiing skills. At the bottom, I skiied right over to the chair lift (totally empty but running) and got on the lift and waved at the only lift operator and went back up and did it again. (For those of you who have been there, this was the Big Dipper Express chair.) Then, I skiied all over the Nevada side -- still not seeing anyone at all -- and skiied every intermediate slope I could get to. It was amazing. It was like a totally private first-class mountain. Eventually (three hours later) I met my TC for lunch and then we skiied all around the mountain again for several hours. We were still virtually alone. I think there were about 11 people on the mountain that day total. So mainly it was me in my red jacket whizzing down the mountain with my friend ahead of me in a blue jacket, and that was all I could see besides the desert of Nevada opening below to the right and lake Tahoe and California spreading out to the left and the blue blue sky and the white white snow and the sequoias and the jeffrey pines and the gnarled mountain top conifers. I only fell down once, and that was because I ran into a small pile of wet snow and did a spectacular somesault type thing before crashing in a pile of giggles.By 4 p.m. I was floating like an astronaut in the hottub, completely blotto, wind-burned, sun-burned, very tired, wearing a foolish apres-ski grin, staring back up the mountain at the crazy steep slopes I had skiied down all day. By 10 p.m., I was sound asleep.
And that was how I learned to ski.
posted by Anonymous @ 12:22 AM
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