Continue from Part I...

After a lot of food (almost too much, hehehe), we walk around for a bit to take some pictures. Reno is much smaller than Las Vagas, there are a lot of light on the street, but no where as grant. It really the biggest small city in the world.... small city.

The biggest small city in the world

The next day we thought to go to Northstar originally, since some friends of my brother are heading there before returning to SF. It should be fun for a bunch of us going up together. But it was snowing in the morning when we wake up, this also mean the road will be difficult to travel, especially we do not have a 4x4 (damn Hertz!) After a episode with Hertz trying to exchange for a 4x4 and failed. We met up with friends and head up the hill.

The road is quite horrible to travel on, even for me that from the Big White North; Snow on the road and quite slippery. The snow is a mix of slush and rocky snow chunks. We have to fight the steering when changing lane as there are snow pack on the road. We hit traffic shortly after leaving town, as people stopped to put on snow chains. After a while, we thought it will be hours before we will reach the hill. So we bailed out (of course, we called and let our friends know) and turn around for the closer by Mt. Rose.

snow on the road.... horrible

The road to Mt. Rose is slightly better, and it starts to rain instead of snow. On the way, we saw emergency vechicles on a car accident scene. Obviously, for a moment we wonder if we will make it up that 7000+ ft ski-hill. As we accend the hill, rain turns into snow as evalation increase. Traffic slows down because of the snow. After travelling cautiously, we finally get there. The hill is covered under think screen of snow and wind is blowing hard, but fortunately the hill is still opened.

so much snow up the hill snow..... slope.... road

We arrived around noon, my brother go rent snowboard gear, I noticed a poster of Mr. Terminator promoting California. It's California afterall, where Hollywood is.

Termintor for winter

While my brother getting his gear, I go up for a blue run. The weather is not better than the previous day, the snow is crystal hard and painful when hitting my face. The wind is quite strong and very cloudy up at the summit.

Whether I put on my goggle or not, I can't see more than 10 feets in front of me and it'a all white-out surrounding me. It's not helping when the terrain is so bumpy, I have so much trouble making every toe turn. This exposed my weakness on the toe side for absorbing the bump to adapt to the terrain. There are a lot of powder everywhere, every time I hit a bump and stopped, I sink into the powder. There are so much powder I rarely ride in such condition (I can only recall twice). At some spot, there are 1-2 feet of powder on the side and my body sink in fully like I am sitting on a very puffy so far. More than once my snowboard head is caught in the powder and struck. It's a pity I don't know how to ride on such powder/bumpy snow.... besides laying on my back feet.

It took me 20ish minutes to go up and down from the hill. My brother is ready to go after I get down the hill. The powder on the green run is on his side, he turns more confidently on the soft snow. I also show him novice turn. The weather getting worse and worse on each run, wind and heavy snow on us.

Bad snow more bad snow

We ride run after run until they close at 4pm. We are able to do 3 runs in an hour at the end, which is a good improvement compare to 45 minutes for one run. It shows how much my brother improve in 2 days.

Kal me

Conclusion in part III
tags to del.icio.us:
tags to Technorati:

AddThis Social Bookmark Button