Tahoe Storm

Maureen and I drove up to the cabin on Friday night, where we met Otto (the swedish contingent of the house) and his friends Anika and Tobias (and little Linus). Julie, MM. Ginsberg and Jahr drove up later that night as well. There were a few snow showers at Donner pass, but nothing to write home about. It started to snow gently overnight and we spent Saturday playing in powder at Alpine Meadows. It was rather windy, and since we were soaked form the falling snow, it got very chilly, and we decided to head home for Julie's now famous warm chocolate. Albert and Kristin had come up that morning with their front wheel drive Jetta (this fact is of no significance at this point, but may well be later...).

Things got serious that night. When we woke up, it was snowing hard, and 12 (30cm) inches of new snow were covering our deck. Unfortunately for Albert's Jetta our deck was not the only thing covered with a thick layer of snow. After numerous but unsuccessful attemps to get the car moving in any direction other than downhill with the car had to be towed to the highway. Check out the attached pictures of this white inferno (taken Sturday BEFORE the bulk of the storm hit)!

Despite the storm and the fact that most lifts were on windhold, we headed to Squaw, where the lower mountain, and most importantly KT-22 and Olympic lady were running. it had snowed close to 20 inches (50cm) by that time (storm total 34 inches), and for little people like me, that meant knee-high power pleasure. The winds and the near-zero visibility could not spoil an amazing day on the slopes. Unfortunately I did not take any pictures that day, because it was technically too challenging to operate my camera in this blizzard.

After warming up a bit at the Chamois, we decided to hit the road. We drove 2 hours in the snow, and progressed a grand total of 6 miles. Being Engineers, we quickly calculated that at this pace, it would take us 60 hours to get to San Francisco, hence our quick (?) decision to turn around. We had dinner at Wolfdale's and slept at the cabin, hoping the traffic would clear up overnight. The next morning at 6AM Highway 80 was still covered with snow and stranded trucks were piled up from Reno to Truckee, but the friendly Caltrans people let us pass through chain control thanks to the quattro logo on the grille (the ultra-low profile performance tyres luckily went unnoticed).

We were at work at 10h30 that day.