#Big Squaw Mountain

[cleverhottubmiracle]

The Palisades Tahoe ski resort has a lot going for it: an idyllic location seven miles from Lake Tahoe’s western shore, a peak elevation of 9,050 feet with 2,850 feet of vertical, and 6,000 skiable acres spread over two bases and served by 43 lifts.The famed California destination, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary, has cool, swagger and a wealth of demanding terrain. The resort hosted the 1960 Winter Olympics when it was still called Squaw Valley, and is among the Alpine Ski World Cup’s few regular stops in the United States.Yet at times, it feels as if all people talk about is the weather.Take my first visit to the resort, this past February, which took place in a windy whiteout.On the first day, I rode up the tram from the Palisades base area, then felt my way down the blue runs off the Siberia Express and Gold Coast Express lifts in a sea of white on white. Palisades Tahoe is known for its bowls, chutes and gullies, especially off the KT-22 chair, but I was not ready to venture there essentially blindfolded.While I was trying to find my bearings on Emigrant Face — a bowl-like blue area off one of the highest lifts — a snowboarder zoomed by so fast that he didn’t see a ridge in the fog and took off like an eagle. An eagle that couldn’t fly, because he crashed.Still, against all odds, I was having fun.And so was Joan Collins, 60, from Madison, Wis., whom I met during lunch at the Alpine base area the next day, when it was marginally less foggy but snowing hard. “For me the hardest part was not seeing the horizon, snow blowing in your face so you can’t really see where you’re going,” said Ms. Collins. “But we’ve been hollering all the way down on some of those runs — it’s like a big, powdery playground.”As snow fell relentlessly, parts of the mountain were closed for avalanche mitigation. Several lifts were on hold because of winds that, I later learned, could reach 100 miles per hour on the ridge tops. By noon it was obvious I really should have refreshed my jacket’s waterproofing.My visit coincided with a big dump of snow after an alarmingly dry December and an average January. Not long after, in early March, a major storm dropped eight feet of snow on the resort. Which might sound amazing to powder hounds, except that the roads and lifts were closed.This year, true to form, good conditions allowed the resort to kick off its season five days early in November.First in line for stormsThis yo-yo pattern comes from the resort’s location, 200 miles east of San Francisco. The local mountains, part of the Sierra Nevada range, are first in line when moisture-laden storms travel eastward from the Pacific. And with nothing to slow it down, the unimpeded jet stream can hit Palisades Tahoe with hurricane force. The resort’s relatively low altitude, with a main base at 6,200 feet, helps create conditions that can vary drastically within a single day as well as between the upper and the lower mountains. At least the Palisades base has great easygoing terrain at the top, so beginners and intermediates can enjoy good snow quality instead of being stuck on scraped-out or wet runs at lower elevations.There are other big upsides. When it’s not snowing, “we have really nice weather for a Western ski destination,” said Bryan Allegretto, the Northern Sierra specialist at the forecasting and conditions site OpenSnow. “When the sun’s out, it’s warm relative to a lot of mountain areas, so you get this beautiful, amazing weather for skiing that isn’t super cold.” (The average daytime high in January is 36 degrees.)And in a good year, the season can extend well into the spring. “I ski as long as the resort is open — there’s been several years when I skied on July 4,” Stephanie Yu, 49, who lives in Sacramento, said in a phone interview after my trip.A long history and a new nameNo wonder Palisades Tahoe is among the most popular winter destinations in America, even if, technically speaking, it was born only three years ago.The mountain opened in 1949 as Squaw Valley and acquired its neighbor, Alpine Meadows, seven miles away, in 2011. The new entity went by the cumbersome umbrella Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows until it was rebranded as Palisades Tahoe in 2021, to avoid a term that is offensive to many Native Americans.The next year a gondola connecting the base areas at the two mountains was installed; there is also a free on-demand shuttle between the two.Yet part of the Palisades Tahoe draw is how distinct its two components have remained. Palisades is bigger and sleeker, with more and better dining options, an active après scene, activities like disco tubing (which adds party lights and pumping music to regular tubing), and big-time concerts — this year, Diplo was among the performers.The plentiful lifts include a tram and a hybrid known as the Funitel (a mash-up of the French words “funiculaire” and “téléphérique”), and there is an abundance of signature terrain, which, in addition to the KT-22-served runs, includes open steeps off the Headwall and Siberia lifts (unfortunately, among the first to close because of wind) and a bumps minefield named after the local Olympic freestyle skier Jonny Moseley.The Palisades side is so spread out that you can easily move on to another section of the mountain if one gets closed off or too crowded. After struggling with low visibility on my first day, I eventually found better conditions in the Shirley bowl on the back side. Then, to flee both the crowds and the increasingly strong wind, I headed to the Snow King area, tucked away to the far left of the mountain, as you look uphill. From the Red Dog and Far East Express lifts, I made laps on runs that meandered through trees.More complicated was securing a parking spot for my rental car. Palisades Tahoe is part of the Ikon multiresort pass and in recent years has experienced an increase in crowds and traffic. Palisades visitors who don’t stay on-mountain tend to favor Truckee, a town 11 miles away, but Route 89 from there to Palisades can easily turn into a long ribbon of vehicles. (I stayed seven miles from the resort in the other direction, in tiny Tahoe City, which offers an easier commute.)To deal with the crunch, Palisades Tahoe has started requiring parking reservations on Saturdays, Sundays and select holidays. You can book a spot for $30 or try your luck when free reservations open on the Tuesday before the weekend, with sign-up windows at 12 p.m. and 7 p.m. On my first attempt, I hadn’t even completed setting up my account before all the spaces were gone in 12 minutes. A few hours later, it took only six minutes for them to fill up, but I was ready and got a free spotUnassuming AlpineCompared with the Palisades side’s extroverted, big personality, Alpine still feels like an unassuming locals’ hill, with a trail map that looks underfed. Don’t underestimate it: “A lot of the best terrain is hike-to only, well hidden to where your average user won’t find it,” said Mark Fisher, who, with another local, runs a site called Unofficial Alpine that reports on the mountain.For a newcomer, though, the layout felt instinctive and easy, and I was able to have fun with the handful of lifts open on my visit, like the punishingly slow two-seater Yellow Chair — where a wild gust made me slide backward when I disembarked.I also got schooled on an innocent-looking blue run off Roundhouse Express, when my skis hopelessly sank into what looked like mounds of fluffy powder but felt like quicksand. Welcome to the notorious heavy snow known as Sierra cement.Yet something was happening. Trees offered shelter when I needed it, the runs were half empty, there were no lines anywhere, and the snow kept falling. I wasn’t even cold.Fine, count me in: There is something to be said about California skiing.Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram and sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to get expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2024. Source link

[norajworld]

The Palisades Tahoe ski resort has a lot going for it: an idyllic location seven miles from Lake Tahoe’s western shore, a peak elevation of 9,050 feet with 2,850 feet of vertical, and 6,000 skiable acres spread over two bases and served by 43 lifts.The famed California destination, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary, has cool, swagger and a wealth of demanding terrain. The resort hosted the 1960 Winter Olympics when it was still called Squaw Valley, and is among the Alpine Ski World Cup’s few regular stops in the United States.Yet at times, it feels as if all people talk about is the weather.Take my first visit to the resort, this past February, which took place in a windy whiteout.On the first day, I rode up the tram from the Palisades base area, then felt my way down the blue runs off the Siberia Express and Gold Coast Express lifts in a sea of white on white. Palisades Tahoe is known for its bowls, chutes and gullies, especially off the KT-22 chair, but I was not ready to venture there essentially blindfolded.While I was trying to find my bearings on Emigrant Face — a bowl-like blue area off one of the highest lifts — a snowboarder zoomed by so fast that he didn’t see a ridge in the fog and took off like an eagle. An eagle that couldn’t fly, because he crashed.Still, against all odds, I was having fun.And so was Joan Collins, 60, from Madison, Wis., whom I met during lunch at the Alpine base area the next day, when it was marginally less foggy but snowing hard. “For me the hardest part was not seeing the horizon, snow blowing in your face so you can’t really see where you’re going,” said Ms. Collins. “But we’ve been hollering all the way down on some of those runs — it’s like a big, powdery playground.”As snow fell relentlessly, parts of the mountain were closed for avalanche mitigation. Several lifts were on hold because of winds that, I later learned, could reach 100 miles per hour on the ridge tops. By noon it was obvious I really should have refreshed my jacket’s waterproofing.My visit coincided with a big dump of snow after an alarmingly dry December and an average January. Not long after, in early March, a major storm dropped eight feet of snow on the resort. Which might sound amazing to powder hounds, except that the roads and lifts were closed.This year, true to form, good conditions allowed the resort to kick off its season five days early in November.First in line for stormsThis yo-yo pattern comes from the resort’s location, 200 miles east of San Francisco. The local mountains, part of the Sierra Nevada range, are first in line when moisture-laden storms travel eastward from the Pacific. And with nothing to slow it down, the unimpeded jet stream can hit Palisades Tahoe with hurricane force. The resort’s relatively low altitude, with a main base at 6,200 feet, helps create conditions that can vary drastically within a single day as well as between the upper and the lower mountains. At least the Palisades base has great easygoing terrain at the top, so beginners and intermediates can enjoy good snow quality instead of being stuck on scraped-out or wet runs at lower elevations.There are other big upsides. When it’s not snowing, “we have really nice weather for a Western ski destination,” said Bryan Allegretto, the Northern Sierra specialist at the forecasting and conditions site OpenSnow. “When the sun’s out, it’s warm relative to a lot of mountain areas, so you get this beautiful, amazing weather for skiing that isn’t super cold.” (The average daytime high in January is 36 degrees.)And in a good year, the season can extend well into the spring. “I ski as long as the resort is open — there’s been several years when I skied on July 4,” Stephanie Yu, 49, who lives in Sacramento, said in a phone interview after my trip.A long history and a new nameNo wonder Palisades Tahoe is among the most popular winter destinations in America, even if, technically speaking, it was born only three years ago.The mountain opened in 1949 as Squaw Valley and acquired its neighbor, Alpine Meadows, seven miles away, in 2011. The new entity went by the cumbersome umbrella Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows until it was rebranded as Palisades Tahoe in 2021, to avoid a term that is offensive to many Native Americans.The next year a gondola connecting the base areas at the two mountains was installed; there is also a free on-demand shuttle between the two.Yet part of the Palisades Tahoe draw is how distinct its two components have remained. Palisades is bigger and sleeker, with more and better dining options, an active après scene, activities like disco tubing (which adds party lights and pumping music to regular tubing), and big-time concerts — this year, Diplo was among the performers.The plentiful lifts include a tram and a hybrid known as the Funitel (a mash-up of the French words “funiculaire” and “téléphérique”), and there is an abundance of signature terrain, which, in addition to the KT-22-served runs, includes open steeps off the Headwall and Siberia lifts (unfortunately, among the first to close because of wind) and a bumps minefield named after the local Olympic freestyle skier Jonny Moseley.The Palisades side is so spread out that you can easily move on to another section of the mountain if one gets closed off or too crowded. After struggling with low visibility on my first day, I eventually found better conditions in the Shirley bowl on the back side. Then, to flee both the crowds and the increasingly strong wind, I headed to the Snow King area, tucked away to the far left of the mountain, as you look uphill. From the Red Dog and Far East Express lifts, I made laps on runs that meandered through trees.More complicated was securing a parking spot for my rental car. Palisades Tahoe is part of the Ikon multiresort pass and in recent years has experienced an increase in crowds and traffic. Palisades visitors who don’t stay on-mountain tend to favor Truckee, a town 11 miles away, but Route 89 from there to Palisades can easily turn into a long ribbon of vehicles. (I stayed seven miles from the resort in the other direction, in tiny Tahoe City, which offers an easier commute.)To deal with the crunch, Palisades Tahoe has started requiring parking reservations on Saturdays, Sundays and select holidays. You can book a spot for $30 or try your luck when free reservations open on the Tuesday before the weekend, with sign-up windows at 12 p.m. and 7 p.m. On my first attempt, I hadn’t even completed setting up my account before all the spaces were gone in 12 minutes. A few hours later, it took only six minutes for them to fill up, but I was ready and got a free spotUnassuming AlpineCompared with the Palisades side’s extroverted, big personality, Alpine still feels like an unassuming locals’ hill, with a trail map that looks underfed. Don’t underestimate it: “A lot of the best terrain is hike-to only, well hidden to where your average user won’t find it,” said Mark Fisher, who, with another local, runs a site called Unofficial Alpine that reports on the mountain.For a newcomer, though, the layout felt instinctive and easy, and I was able to have fun with the handful of lifts open on my visit, like the punishingly slow two-seater Yellow Chair — where a wild gust made me slide backward when I disembarked.I also got schooled on an innocent-looking blue run off Roundhouse Express, when my skis hopelessly sank into what looked like mounds of fluffy powder but felt like quicksand. Welcome to the notorious heavy snow known as Sierra cement.Yet something was happening. Trees offered shelter when I needed it, the runs were half empty, there were no lines anywhere, and the snow kept falling. I wasn’t even cold.Fine, count me in: There is something to be said about California skiing.Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram and sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to get expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2024. Source link

[ellajme0]

The Palisades Tahoe ski resort has a lot going for it: an idyllic location seven miles from Lake Tahoe’s western shore, a peak elevation of 9,050 feet with 2,850 feet of vertical, and 6,000 skiable acres spread over two bases and served by 43 lifts.The famed California destination, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary, has cool, swagger and a wealth of demanding terrain. The resort hosted the 1960 Winter Olympics when it was still called Squaw Valley, and is among the Alpine Ski World Cup’s few regular stops in the United States.Yet at times, it feels as if all people talk about is the weather.Take my first visit to the resort, this past February, which took place in a windy whiteout.On the first day, I rode up the tram from the Palisades base area, then felt my way down the blue runs off the Siberia Express and Gold Coast Express lifts in a sea of white on white. Palisades Tahoe is known for its bowls, chutes and gullies, especially off the KT-22 chair, but I was not ready to venture there essentially blindfolded.While I was trying to find my bearings on Emigrant Face — a bowl-like blue area off one of the highest lifts — a snowboarder zoomed by so fast that he didn’t see a ridge in the fog and took off like an eagle. An eagle that couldn’t fly, because he crashed.Still, against all odds, I was having fun.And so was Joan Collins, 60, from Madison, Wis., whom I met during lunch at the Alpine base area the next day, when it was marginally less foggy but snowing hard. “For me the hardest part was not seeing the horizon, snow blowing in your face so you can’t really see where you’re going,” said Ms. Collins. “But we’ve been hollering all the way down on some of those runs — it’s like a big, powdery playground.”As snow fell relentlessly, parts of the mountain were closed for avalanche mitigation. Several lifts were on hold because of winds that, I later learned, could reach 100 miles per hour on the ridge tops. By noon it was obvious I really should have refreshed my jacket’s waterproofing.My visit coincided with a big dump of snow after an alarmingly dry December and an average January. Not long after, in early March, a major storm dropped eight feet of snow on the resort. Which might sound amazing to powder hounds, except that the roads and lifts were closed.This year, true to form, good conditions allowed the resort to kick off its season five days early in November.First in line for stormsThis yo-yo pattern comes from the resort’s location, 200 miles east of San Francisco. The local mountains, part of the Sierra Nevada range, are first in line when moisture-laden storms travel eastward from the Pacific. And with nothing to slow it down, the unimpeded jet stream can hit Palisades Tahoe with hurricane force. The resort’s relatively low altitude, with a main base at 6,200 feet, helps create conditions that can vary drastically within a single day as well as between the upper and the lower mountains. At least the Palisades base has great easygoing terrain at the top, so beginners and intermediates can enjoy good snow quality instead of being stuck on scraped-out or wet runs at lower elevations.There are other big upsides. When it’s not snowing, “we have really nice weather for a Western ski destination,” said Bryan Allegretto, the Northern Sierra specialist at the forecasting and conditions site OpenSnow. “When the sun’s out, it’s warm relative to a lot of mountain areas, so you get this beautiful, amazing weather for skiing that isn’t super cold.” (The average daytime high in January is 36 degrees.)And in a good year, the season can extend well into the spring. “I ski as long as the resort is open — there’s been several years when I skied on July 4,” Stephanie Yu, 49, who lives in Sacramento, said in a phone interview after my trip.A long history and a new nameNo wonder Palisades Tahoe is among the most popular winter destinations in America, even if, technically speaking, it was born only three years ago.The mountain opened in 1949 as Squaw Valley and acquired its neighbor, Alpine Meadows, seven miles away, in 2011. The new entity went by the cumbersome umbrella Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows until it was rebranded as Palisades Tahoe in 2021, to avoid a term that is offensive to many Native Americans.The next year a gondola connecting the base areas at the two mountains was installed; there is also a free on-demand shuttle between the two.Yet part of the Palisades Tahoe draw is how distinct its two components have remained. Palisades is bigger and sleeker, with more and better dining options, an active après scene, activities like disco tubing (which adds party lights and pumping music to regular tubing), and big-time concerts — this year, Diplo was among the performers.The plentiful lifts include a tram and a hybrid known as the Funitel (a mash-up of the French words “funiculaire” and “téléphérique”), and there is an abundance of signature terrain, which, in addition to the KT-22-served runs, includes open steeps off the Headwall and Siberia lifts (unfortunately, among the first to close because of wind) and a bumps minefield named after the local Olympic freestyle skier Jonny Moseley.The Palisades side is so spread out that you can easily move on to another section of the mountain if one gets closed off or too crowded. After struggling with low visibility on my first day, I eventually found better conditions in the Shirley bowl on the back side. Then, to flee both the crowds and the increasingly strong wind, I headed to the Snow King area, tucked away to the far left of the mountain, as you look uphill. From the Red Dog and Far East Express lifts, I made laps on runs that meandered through trees.More complicated was securing a parking spot for my rental car. Palisades Tahoe is part of the Ikon multiresort pass and in recent years has experienced an increase in crowds and traffic. Palisades visitors who don’t stay on-mountain tend to favor Truckee, a town 11 miles away, but Route 89 from there to Palisades can easily turn into a long ribbon of vehicles. (I stayed seven miles from the resort in the other direction, in tiny Tahoe City, which offers an easier commute.)To deal with the crunch, Palisades Tahoe has started requiring parking reservations on Saturdays, Sundays and select holidays. You can book a spot for $30 or try your luck when free reservations open on the Tuesday before the weekend, with sign-up windows at 12 p.m. and 7 p.m. On my first attempt, I hadn’t even completed setting up my account before all the spaces were gone in 12 minutes. A few hours later, it took only six minutes for them to fill up, but I was ready and got a free spotUnassuming AlpineCompared with the Palisades side’s extroverted, big personality, Alpine still feels like an unassuming locals’ hill, with a trail map that looks underfed. Don’t underestimate it: “A lot of the best terrain is hike-to only, well hidden to where your average user won’t find it,” said Mark Fisher, who, with another local, runs a site called Unofficial Alpine that reports on the mountain.For a newcomer, though, the layout felt instinctive and easy, and I was able to have fun with the handful of lifts open on my visit, like the punishingly slow two-seater Yellow Chair — where a wild gust made me slide backward when I disembarked.I also got schooled on an innocent-looking blue run off Roundhouse Express, when my skis hopelessly sank into what looked like mounds of fluffy powder but felt like quicksand. Welcome to the notorious heavy snow known as Sierra cement.Yet something was happening. Trees offered shelter when I needed it, the runs were half empty, there were no lines anywhere, and the snow kept falling. I wasn’t even cold.Fine, count me in: There is something to be said about California skiing.Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram and sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to get expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2024. Source link

[chilimili212]

The Palisades Tahoe ski resort has a lot going for it: an idyllic location seven miles from Lake Tahoe’s western shore, a peak elevation of 9,050 feet with 2,850 feet of vertical, and 6,000 skiable acres spread over two bases and served by 43 lifts.The famed California destination, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary, has cool, swagger and a wealth of demanding terrain. The resort hosted the 1960 Winter Olympics when it was still called Squaw Valley, and is among the Alpine Ski World Cup’s few regular stops in the United States.Yet at times, it feels as if all people talk about is the weather.Take my first visit to the resort, this past February, which took place in a windy whiteout.On the first day, I rode up the tram from the Palisades base area, then felt my way down the blue runs off the Siberia Express and Gold Coast Express lifts in a sea of white on white. Palisades Tahoe is known for its bowls, chutes and gullies, especially off the KT-22 chair, but I was not ready to venture there essentially blindfolded.While I was trying to find my bearings on Emigrant Face — a bowl-like blue area off one of the highest lifts — a snowboarder zoomed by so fast that he didn’t see a ridge in the fog and took off like an eagle. An eagle that couldn’t fly, because he crashed.Still, against all odds, I was having fun.And so was Joan Collins, 60, from Madison, Wis., whom I met during lunch at the Alpine base area the next day, when it was marginally less foggy but snowing hard. “For me the hardest part was not seeing the horizon, snow blowing in your face so you can’t really see where you’re going,” said Ms. Collins. “But we’ve been hollering all the way down on some of those runs — it’s like a big, powdery playground.”As snow fell relentlessly, parts of the mountain were closed for avalanche mitigation. Several lifts were on hold because of winds that, I later learned, could reach 100 miles per hour on the ridge tops. By noon it was obvious I really should have refreshed my jacket’s waterproofing.My visit coincided with a big dump of snow after an alarmingly dry December and an average January. Not long after, in early March, a major storm dropped eight feet of snow on the resort. Which might sound amazing to powder hounds, except that the roads and lifts were closed.This year, true to form, good conditions allowed the resort to kick off its season five days early in November.First in line for stormsThis yo-yo pattern comes from the resort’s location, 200 miles east of San Francisco. The local mountains, part of the Sierra Nevada range, are first in line when moisture-laden storms travel eastward from the Pacific. And with nothing to slow it down, the unimpeded jet stream can hit Palisades Tahoe with hurricane force. The resort’s relatively low altitude, with a main base at 6,200 feet, helps create conditions that can vary drastically within a single day as well as between the upper and the lower mountains. At least the Palisades base has great easygoing terrain at the top, so beginners and intermediates can enjoy good snow quality instead of being stuck on scraped-out or wet runs at lower elevations.There are other big upsides. When it’s not snowing, “we have really nice weather for a Western ski destination,” said Bryan Allegretto, the Northern Sierra specialist at the forecasting and conditions site OpenSnow. “When the sun’s out, it’s warm relative to a lot of mountain areas, so you get this beautiful, amazing weather for skiing that isn’t super cold.” (The average daytime high in January is 36 degrees.)And in a good year, the season can extend well into the spring. “I ski as long as the resort is open — there’s been several years when I skied on July 4,” Stephanie Yu, 49, who lives in Sacramento, said in a phone interview after my trip.A long history and a new nameNo wonder Palisades Tahoe is among the most popular winter destinations in America, even if, technically speaking, it was born only three years ago.The mountain opened in 1949 as Squaw Valley and acquired its neighbor, Alpine Meadows, seven miles away, in 2011. The new entity went by the cumbersome umbrella Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows until it was rebranded as Palisades Tahoe in 2021, to avoid a term that is offensive to many Native Americans.The next year a gondola connecting the base areas at the two mountains was installed; there is also a free on-demand shuttle between the two.Yet part of the Palisades Tahoe draw is how distinct its two components have remained. Palisades is bigger and sleeker, with more and better dining options, an active après scene, activities like disco tubing (which adds party lights and pumping music to regular tubing), and big-time concerts — this year, Diplo was among the performers.The plentiful lifts include a tram and a hybrid known as the Funitel (a mash-up of the French words “funiculaire” and “téléphérique”), and there is an abundance of signature terrain, which, in addition to the KT-22-served runs, includes open steeps off the Headwall and Siberia lifts (unfortunately, among the first to close because of wind) and a bumps minefield named after the local Olympic freestyle skier Jonny Moseley.The Palisades side is so spread out that you can easily move on to another section of the mountain if one gets closed off or too crowded. After struggling with low visibility on my first day, I eventually found better conditions in the Shirley bowl on the back side. Then, to flee both the crowds and the increasingly strong wind, I headed to the Snow King area, tucked away to the far left of the mountain, as you look uphill. From the Red Dog and Far East Express lifts, I made laps on runs that meandered through trees.More complicated was securing a parking spot for my rental car. Palisades Tahoe is part of the Ikon multiresort pass and in recent years has experienced an increase in crowds and traffic. Palisades visitors who don’t stay on-mountain tend to favor Truckee, a town 11 miles away, but Route 89 from there to Palisades can easily turn into a long ribbon of vehicles. (I stayed seven miles from the resort in the other direction, in tiny Tahoe City, which offers an easier commute.)To deal with the crunch, Palisades Tahoe has started requiring parking reservations on Saturdays, Sundays and select holidays. You can book a spot for $30 or try your luck when free reservations open on the Tuesday before the weekend, with sign-up windows at 12 p.m. and 7 p.m. On my first attempt, I hadn’t even completed setting up my account before all the spaces were gone in 12 minutes. A few hours later, it took only six minutes for them to fill up, but I was ready and got a free spotUnassuming AlpineCompared with the Palisades side’s extroverted, big personality, Alpine still feels like an unassuming locals’ hill, with a trail map that looks underfed. Don’t underestimate it: “A lot of the best terrain is hike-to only, well hidden to where your average user won’t find it,” said Mark Fisher, who, with another local, runs a site called Unofficial Alpine that reports on the mountain.For a newcomer, though, the layout felt instinctive and easy, and I was able to have fun with the handful of lifts open on my visit, like the punishingly slow two-seater Yellow Chair — where a wild gust made me slide backward when I disembarked.I also got schooled on an innocent-looking blue run off Roundhouse Express, when my skis hopelessly sank into what looked like mounds of fluffy powder but felt like quicksand. Welcome to the notorious heavy snow known as Sierra cement.Yet something was happening. Trees offered shelter when I needed it, the runs were half empty, there were no lines anywhere, and the snow kept falling. I wasn’t even cold.Fine, count me in: There is something to be said about California skiing.Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram and sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to get expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2024. Source link

[oliviajoyice21]

The Palisades Tahoe ski resort has a lot going for it: an idyllic location seven miles from Lake Tahoe’s western shore, a peak elevation of 9,050 feet with 2,850 feet of vertical, and 6,000 skiable acres spread over two bases and served by 43 lifts.The famed California destination, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary, has cool, swagger and a wealth of demanding terrain. The resort hosted the 1960 Winter Olympics when it was still called Squaw Valley, and is among the Alpine Ski World Cup’s few regular stops in the United States.Yet at times, it feels as if all people talk about is the weather.Take my first visit to the resort, this past February, which took place in a windy whiteout.On the first day, I rode up the tram from the Palisades base area, then felt my way down the blue runs off the Siberia Express and Gold Coast Express lifts in a sea of white on white. Palisades Tahoe is known for its bowls, chutes and gullies, especially off the KT-22 chair, but I was not ready to venture there essentially blindfolded.While I was trying to find my bearings on Emigrant Face — a bowl-like blue area off one of the highest lifts — a snowboarder zoomed by so fast that he didn’t see a ridge in the fog and took off like an eagle. An eagle that couldn’t fly, because he crashed.Still, against all odds, I was having fun.And so was Joan Collins, 60, from Madison, Wis., whom I met during lunch at the Alpine base area the next day, when it was marginally less foggy but snowing hard. “For me the hardest part was not seeing the horizon, snow blowing in your face so you can’t really see where you’re going,” said Ms. Collins. “But we’ve been hollering all the way down on some of those runs — it’s like a big, powdery playground.”As snow fell relentlessly, parts of the mountain were closed for avalanche mitigation. Several lifts were on hold because of winds that, I later learned, could reach 100 miles per hour on the ridge tops. By noon it was obvious I really should have refreshed my jacket’s waterproofing.My visit coincided with a big dump of snow after an alarmingly dry December and an average January. Not long after, in early March, a major storm dropped eight feet of snow on the resort. Which might sound amazing to powder hounds, except that the roads and lifts were closed.This year, true to form, good conditions allowed the resort to kick off its season five days early in November.First in line for stormsThis yo-yo pattern comes from the resort’s location, 200 miles east of San Francisco. The local mountains, part of the Sierra Nevada range, are first in line when moisture-laden storms travel eastward from the Pacific. And with nothing to slow it down, the unimpeded jet stream can hit Palisades Tahoe with hurricane force. The resort’s relatively low altitude, with a main base at 6,200 feet, helps create conditions that can vary drastically within a single day as well as between the upper and the lower mountains. At least the Palisades base has great easygoing terrain at the top, so beginners and intermediates can enjoy good snow quality instead of being stuck on scraped-out or wet runs at lower elevations.There are other big upsides. When it’s not snowing, “we have really nice weather for a Western ski destination,” said Bryan Allegretto, the Northern Sierra specialist at the forecasting and conditions site OpenSnow. “When the sun’s out, it’s warm relative to a lot of mountain areas, so you get this beautiful, amazing weather for skiing that isn’t super cold.” (The average daytime high in January is 36 degrees.)And in a good year, the season can extend well into the spring. “I ski as long as the resort is open — there’s been several years when I skied on July 4,” Stephanie Yu, 49, who lives in Sacramento, said in a phone interview after my trip.A long history and a new nameNo wonder Palisades Tahoe is among the most popular winter destinations in America, even if, technically speaking, it was born only three years ago.The mountain opened in 1949 as Squaw Valley and acquired its neighbor, Alpine Meadows, seven miles away, in 2011. The new entity went by the cumbersome umbrella Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows until it was rebranded as Palisades Tahoe in 2021, to avoid a term that is offensive to many Native Americans.The next year a gondola connecting the base areas at the two mountains was installed; there is also a free on-demand shuttle between the two.Yet part of the Palisades Tahoe draw is how distinct its two components have remained. Palisades is bigger and sleeker, with more and better dining options, an active après scene, activities like disco tubing (which adds party lights and pumping music to regular tubing), and big-time concerts — this year, Diplo was among the performers.The plentiful lifts include a tram and a hybrid known as the Funitel (a mash-up of the French words “funiculaire” and “téléphérique”), and there is an abundance of signature terrain, which, in addition to the KT-22-served runs, includes open steeps off the Headwall and Siberia lifts (unfortunately, among the first to close because of wind) and a bumps minefield named after the local Olympic freestyle skier Jonny Moseley.The Palisades side is so spread out that you can easily move on to another section of the mountain if one gets closed off or too crowded. After struggling with low visibility on my first day, I eventually found better conditions in the Shirley bowl on the back side. Then, to flee both the crowds and the increasingly strong wind, I headed to the Snow King area, tucked away to the far left of the mountain, as you look uphill. From the Red Dog and Far East Express lifts, I made laps on runs that meandered through trees.More complicated was securing a parking spot for my rental car. Palisades Tahoe is part of the Ikon multiresort pass and in recent years has experienced an increase in crowds and traffic. Palisades visitors who don’t stay on-mountain tend to favor Truckee, a town 11 miles away, but Route 89 from there to Palisades can easily turn into a long ribbon of vehicles. (I stayed seven miles from the resort in the other direction, in tiny Tahoe City, which offers an easier commute.)To deal with the crunch, Palisades Tahoe has started requiring parking reservations on Saturdays, Sundays and select holidays. You can book a spot for $30 or try your luck when free reservations open on the Tuesday before the weekend, with sign-up windows at 12 p.m. and 7 p.m. On my first attempt, I hadn’t even completed setting up my account before all the spaces were gone in 12 minutes. A few hours later, it took only six minutes for them to fill up, but I was ready and got a free spotUnassuming AlpineCompared with the Palisades side’s extroverted, big personality, Alpine still feels like an unassuming locals’ hill, with a trail map that looks underfed. Don’t underestimate it: “A lot of the best terrain is hike-to only, well hidden to where your average user won’t find it,” said Mark Fisher, who, with another local, runs a site called Unofficial Alpine that reports on the mountain.For a newcomer, though, the layout felt instinctive and easy, and I was able to have fun with the handful of lifts open on my visit, like the punishingly slow two-seater Yellow Chair — where a wild gust made me slide backward when I disembarked.I also got schooled on an innocent-looking blue run off Roundhouse Express, when my skis hopelessly sank into what looked like mounds of fluffy powder but felt like quicksand. Welcome to the notorious heavy snow known as Sierra cement.Yet something was happening. Trees offered shelter when I needed it, the runs were half empty, there were no lines anywhere, and the snow kept falling. I wasn’t even cold.Fine, count me in: There is something to be said about California skiing.Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram and sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to get expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2024. Source link

[rasmasandra]

Maine Off the Beaten Path

Maine Off the Beaten Path

Fort Kent Blockhouse Historic Site is located in Fort Kent and is a state park at the confluence of the Fish and St. John Rivers. French colonists first settled this area in the early 1800s after they were forced from their Canadian homes in Acadia (now the Marine Provinces). These French colonists had refused to pledge allegiance to the conquering British. When great stands of timber started…

[sherrylephotography]

Bridge of the Gods in Cascade Locks Oregon

The bridge road is this grate so you can see the river under you as you walk over the bridge.

No side walks on this bridge, watch out for the vehicles that you share the bridge with,

We walked over the bridge on May 16, 2022

Sherrylephotography May 16, 2022

Cascade Locks Oregon. Views from the Bridge of the Gods.

Legend of Bridge of the Gods

Long before recorded history began, the Native American legend of the Bridge of the Gods says the Great Spirit built a bridge of stone that was a gift of great magnitude. The Great Spirit, named Manito, placed a wise old woman named Loo-Wit, on the bridge as its guardian. He then sent to earth his three sons, Multnomah, the warrior; Klickitat (Mount Adams), the totem-maker; and Wyeast (Mount Hood), the singer. Peace lived in the valley until beautiful Squaw Mountain moved in between Klickitat and Wyeast. The beautiful woman mountain grew to love Wyeast, but also thought it fun to flirt with his big brother, Klickitat. Soon the brothers began to quarrel over everything, stomping their feet and throwing fire and rocks at each other. Finally, they threw so many rocks onto the Bridge of the Gods and shook the earth so hard that the bridge broke in the middle and fell in to the river.

Klickitat, who was the larger of the two mountains, won the fight, and Wyeast admitted defeat, giving over all claim to beautiful Squaw Mountain. In a short time, Squaw Mountain became very heartbroken for she truly loved Wyeast. One day she fell at Klickitat’s feet and sank into a deep sleep from which she never awakened. She is now known as the Sleeping Beauty and lies where she fell, just west of Mount Adams.

During the war between Wyeast and Klickitat, Loo-Wit, the guardian of the bridge, tried to stop the fight. When she failed, she stayed at her post and did her best to save the bridge from destruction, although she was badly burned and battered by hot rocks.

When the bridge fell, she fell with it. The Great Spirit placed her among the great snow mountains, but being old in spirit, she did not desire companionship and so withdrew from the main range to settle by herself far to the west. Today you will find her as Mount St. Helens, the youngest mountain in the Cascades.

Scientists say that about 1,000 years ago, the mountain on the Washington side of the Columbia River, near what is now the town of Stevenson, caved off, blocking the river. The natural dam was high enough to cause a great inland sea covering the prairies as far away as Idaho. For many years, natural erosion weakened the dam and finally washed it out. These waters of the inland sea rushed out, tearing away more of the earth and rocks until a great tunnel was formed under the mountain range leaving a natural bridge over the water. The bridge was called “The Great Cross Over” and is now named “The Bridge of the Gods.”

LEGEND: an unverifiable story handed down by tradition from earlier times and popularly accepted as historical

Material for this article provided by the Port of Cascade Locks, Oregon

Click here for more information on the bridge and the Legend of the Bridge of the Gods

[thelastchair]

Powder Magazine

(Written by Sam Cox - December 28, 2020)

Growing up in Montana, my winter free time was consumed by skiing. Big Sky was the destination when I was barely old enough to walk. Eventually we made the move to Bozeman and Bridger Bowl became my second home. During the early years, my family made the trek to a handful of Warren Miller movies when they were on tour in the fall and Snow Country was the magazine subscription that landed on the coffee table. I was vaguely aware of Jackson Hole, Snowbird and Squaw Valley and my father would occasionally regale me with tales of skiing (read Après) in Germany when he was in the Army. At some level, I already understood that there was something special about Bridger, but realistically, my sphere of outside influence was quite small. Christmas of 1989 turned my entire world upside down. My aunt and uncle are longtime Salt Lake City residents and Brighton skiers. Typically they would send a package each year with the customary cookies, toffee and a card. However, this year they sent two VHS tapes and a magazine - Ski Time, Blizzard of Aahhh’s and a copy of Powder. Things would never be the same for me. Scot Schmidt became my hero, Greg Stump was taking skiing into uncharted territory and above it all, Powder created an eloquent voice for our sport and was the fabric that held things together. Even at my young age, everything that I’d intuitively sensed before was distilled into a potent desire to devote myself to the simple pursuit of being a skier.

Johan Jonsson, Engelberg, Switzerland - Photo: Mattias Fredriksson/POWDER

Powder was founded in Sun Valley by the Moe brothers in 1972 as an annual portfolio of The Other Ski Experience. After several years of running the magazine, Jake and David Moe sold Powder to the owner of Surfer Magazine. A repurposed aircraft hangar in San Juan Capistrano became the new home of skiing’s most prestigious publication. Over time, there was an ebb and flow to the size of staff and cast of characters, each person leaving their unique mark. For decades Powder weathered corporate acquisitions, office relocations and the constant metamorphosis of the ski industry - never losing its voice, Powder remained the benchmark. It was a source of creativity, inspiration and a defacto annal of history. For many it was also a shining beacon, a glimpse into a world filled with deep turns and iconic destinations - even if this world could only be inhabited inside the constructs of your imagination.

My story and the impact Powder had on the direction I would take is hardly unique. The magazine left an indelible impression on countless skiers. When the news broke this fall that operations were being suspended indefinitely, a heartbroken community took to social media to pay homage to the magazine and how it changed their lives and in some cases, careers. This is my version of a tribute and it’s definitely not perfect. In order to gain some perspective, I reached out to former staff members - a collective I admire and respect. It’s an attempt to articulate the essence of Powder, capture its influence on the skiing landscape and give credit to the people who made it come to life. 

Bernie Rosow, Mammoth Mountain, CA - Photo: Christian Pondella/POWDER

HANS LUDWIG - The Jaded Local

“Skiing has always been really tribal and one of the last vestiges of having an oral history. Powder was a unique concept, because they weren’t really concerned with the family market. They were just concerned about being really into skiing. Growing up in Colorado and skiing moguls, my coaches Robert and Roger were featured in the early Greg Stump films. Being in their orbit, I knew a little bit about skiing culture and what was going on out there, but didn’t have the whole picture. The Stump films resonated with me, but Ski/Skiing Magazines didn’t really do it for me. Powder was the door that opened things culturally, it was the only entry point before Blizzard of Aahhh’s.”

“Something that nobody gives Powder credit for, is sponsoring the Greg Stump, TGR and MSP movies and giving them full support right from their inception. It legitimized those companies and helped them become one of the catalysts for change and evolution in skiing. Ultimately this change would have happened, but at a much slower pace without the support of Powder. Getting support from Powder meant they’d weeded out the posers and kooks and what they were backing wasn’t something or someone that was “aspiring” they were a cut above.”

“Powder brought a lot of things into the mainstream, raised awareness and helped to legitimize them: Jean-Marc Boivin, Patrick Vallencant, Pierre Tardivel, telemarking, monoskiing, snowboarding, the JHAF, Chamonix, La Grave, Mikaela Shiffrin, fat skis pre McConkey, skiing in South America….the list goes on.”

“I had some rowdy trips with Powder. Writing “Lost In America,” I went Utah-Montana-Fernie-Banff-Revelstoke via pickup truck, only backcountry skiing and camping in the mud. It was a month plus. I did another month plus in Nevada, which was after back to back Jackson and Silverton. Total time was two plus months. That was fucked up, I was super loose after that whole thing. So many sketchy days with total strangers”

“People forget that Powder was around long before the advent of the fucking pro skier. Starting in 1996, the magazine was in the impact zone of the ski industrial complex. There is limited space for content each season. It was a challenge to balance the pressure coming from the athletes and brands to cover something that was going to make them money vs. staying true to the Moe brothers original intent and profiling an eccentric skier, a unique location or even fucking ski racing.”

Full Circle - Photo: MJ Carroll

KEITH CARLSEN - Editor

“When I was young, Ski/Skiing didn’t do anything for my spirit, but Powder lit me up. It ignited a passion in diehard skiers and gave them a voice and community. It was focused on the counter culture - the type of people who rearrange their lives to ski. This was in direct opposition to other magazines that were targeting rich people, trying to explain technique, sell condos or highlight the amenities at a ski area.”

“Skiing has always been my outlet and mechanism to get away from things in life. My two talents are writing and photography, so I enrolled at Western State with the direct goal of landing an internship at Powder. Even at 19, I had complete focus on the direction I wanted to take. If it didn’t work out, my backup plan was to be a ski bum. 48 hours after graduating, I was headed to southern California to live in my van and start my position at Powder. When the decision was made to close the magazine, it was really personal for me. Powder had provided me direction in life for the last 30 years and I needed some time to process it. In a way, it was almost like going to a funeral for a good friend - even though it’s gone, the magazine lives on in all of us and can never be taken away.”

“It was, and will always remain, one of my life’s greatest honors to serve as the editor-in-chief for Powder Magazine. It was literally a dream that came true. I’m so grateful for everyone who came before me and everyone who served after me. That opportunity opened literally hundreds of doors for me and continues to do so today. I owe the magazine a massive debt of gratitude. Every single editor was a warrior and fought for the title with their lives. They were doing double duty - not only from competition with other publications, but the internal struggle of budget cuts, staff reductions and trying to do more with less. Powder never belonged in the hands of a corporation. The magazine spoke to an impassioned community and never made sense to an accountant or on a ledger.”

Trevor Petersen, Mt. Serratus, BC - Photo: Scott Markewitz/POWDER

SIERRA SHAFER - Editor In Chief

“Powder celebrated everything that is good and pure in skiing. It highlighted the old school, the new and the irreverent. The magazine also called bullshit when they saw it. It was a checkpoint, a cultural barometer and an honest reflection on where skiing has been and where it’s going.”

“My involvement with Powder came completely out of left field. I was never an intern or established in the ski industry. My background was strictly in journalism, I was a skier living in Southern California and editing a newspaper. I knew that I wanted to get the fuck out of LA and Powder was that opportunity. It was a huge shift going from my job and life being completely separate to work becoming my life. Literally overnight, Powder became everything - friends, connections and part of my identity. It derailed my trajectory in the best possible way.”

Brad Holmes, Donner Pass, CA - Photo: Dave Norehad/POWDER

MATT HANSEN - Executive Editor

“Keith Carlsen was a man of ideas, he had tremendous vision and influence. He came up with the ideas for Powder Week and the Powder Awards in 2001. In some respects those two events saved the magazine.”

“Powder was the soul of skiing and kept the vibe, it changed people’s lives and inspired them to move to a ski town. As a writer I always wanted to think it was the stories that did that, but in truth it was the photography. Images of skiing truly became an art form, 100% thanks to Powder Magazine and Dave Reddick. Dave cultivated and mentored photographers, he was always searching for the unpredictable image from around the world and pressed the photographers to look at things from a different angle.”

“It sounds cliche, but writing a feature about Chamonix was the highlight for me. Sitting on the plane, things were absolutely unreal. I linked up with Nate Wallace and the whole experience from start to finish was out of my comfort zone. Ducking ropes to ski overhead pow on the Pas De Chèvre, walking out of the ice tunnel on a deserted Aiguille du Midi right as the clouds parted, late nights in town that were too fuzzy to recall. The energy of the place taught me a lot. I didn’t have a smartphone and there was no Instagram - I had time to write, observe, take notes and be present with who I was and with the experience. As a writer it didn’t get any better.”

“The true gift of working for Powder, was the once in a lifetime adventures that I wish I could have shared with my family, I was so lucky to have had those opportunities. It almost brought tears to me eyes.”

Peter Romaine, Jackson Hole, WY - Photo: Wade McKoy/POWDER

DAVE REDDICK - Director of Photography

“Just ski down there and take a photo of something, for cryin’ out loud!”  “I’ve found that channeling McConkey has been keeping it in perspective. Powder’s been shuttered. That sucks. What doesn’t suck is the good times and the people that have shared the ride thus far and I’m just thankful to be one of them. There’s been some really kind sentiments from friends and colleagues, but this must be said - Every editor (especially the editors), every art director (I’ve driven them nuts), every publisher and sales associate, every photographer, writer, and intern, and all the others behind the scenes who’ve ever contributed their talents get equal share of acknowledgment for carrying the torch that is Powder Mag. There’s hundreds of us! No decision has ever been made in a vacuum. Always a collective. At our best, we’ve been a reflection of skiers everywhere and of one of the greatest experiences in the world. It’s that community, and that feeling, that is Powder. I’m not sure what’s next and I’m not afraid of change but”  “There’s something really cool about being scared. I don’t know what!”

Scot Schmidt, Alaska - Photo: Chris Noble/POWDER

DEREK TAYLOR - Editor 

“Powder was the first magazine dedicated to the experience and not trying to teach people how to ski. It was enthusiast media focused on the soul and culture. It’s also important to highlight the impact Powder had outside of skiing - today you have the Surfer’s Journal effect where every sport wants that type of publication. However, prior to their inception, everybody wanted a version of Powder.”

“Neil Stebbins and Steve Casimiro deserve a lot of credit for the magazine retaining its voice and staying true to the core group of skiers it represented.”

“Keith Carlsen is responsible for the idea behind Super Park. This was a time when skiing had just gone through a stale phase. There was a newfound energy in park skiing and younger generations, this event helped to rebrand Powder and solidify its goal of being all inclusive. Racing, powder, park, touring - it’s all just skiing.”

Joe Sagona, Mt. Baldy, CA - Photo: Dave Reddick/POWDER

JOHNNY STIFTER - Editor In Chief

“What did Powder mean to me... Well, everything. As a reader and staffer, it inspired me and made me laugh. I learned about local cultures that felt far away and learned about far away cultures that didn’t feel foreign, if that makes sense.”

“But I cherished those late nights the most, making magazines with the small staff. Despite the deadline stress, I always felt so grateful to be working for this sacred institution and writing and editing for true skiers. We all just had so much damn fun. And it didn’t hurt meeting such passionate locals at hallowed places, like Aspen and Austria, that I once dreamed of visiting and skiing. The Powder culture is so inclusive and so fun, I never felt more alive.”

Doug Coombs, All Hail The King - Photo: Ace Kvale/POWDER

HEATHER HANSMAN - Online Editor

“Powder is a lifestyle and an interconnected circle of people. It’s about getting a job offer at Alta, opening your home to random strangers, locking your keys in your car and getting rescued by a friend you made on a trip years ago. Through the selfish activity of skiing, you can create a community of people you cherish and can depend on through highs and lows.”

Ashley Otte, Mike Wiegele Heli, BC - Photo: Dave Reddick/POWDER

The contributions of so many talented individuals made the magazine possible. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to everyone who shared their experience at Powder with me. Also, I want to thank Porter Fox and David Page for crafting inspiring feature stories that I enjoyed immensely over the years.

After the reality set in that the final issue had arrived, a void was created for generations of skiers. I’ve been focused on being thankful for what we had, rather than sad it’s gone. It’s a challenging time for print media and I wholeheartedly advocate supporting the remaining titles in anyway you can. In a culture driven by a voracious appetite for mass media consumption and instant gratification - I cherish the ritual of waiting for a magazine to arrive, appreciating the effort that went into creating the content and being able to have that physical substance in my hand. Thanks for everything Powder, you are missed, but your spirit lives on.  

Captain Powder - Photo: Gary Bigham/POWDER

[squawmountainranchtx]

hunting

Website: https://www.squawmountainranch.com/

Address: 2576 Squaw Mountain Rd, Jacksboro, TX 76458

Phone: +1 (830) 275-3277

Today, SMR is offering some of the best Texas Trophy Whitetail Hunting and Exotic Hunting opportunities in all of Texas, along with Bird, Turkey, Hog, Varmint, and More Hunts including: Trophy Elk, Axis Deer, Scimitar Oryx, Blackbuck Antelope, Fallow Deer, Addax, Aoudad, Buffalo, White Buffalo, Corsican Rams, Black Hawaiian, Bongo, Blesbok, Catalina Goats, Eland, Four-Horned Sheep, Gazelle, Gemsbok, Himalayan Tahr, Impala, Hybrid Ibex, Kudu, Markhor, Mouflon Ram, Nyala, Nubian Ibex, Red Stag, Red Lechwe, Sable, Spanish Goats, Springbok, Texas Dall Ram, Transcaspian Urial, Wildebeest, Zebra and other African game to the discriminating hunter. Located in Jack County, less than 2 hours from the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, Squaw Mountain Ranch offers premier Big Texas Whitetail Hunting Operation providing an experience of a lifetime to all hunters.

[xtruss]

Native Americans: Yellowstone Renames Mountain Linked to Massacre of Native Americans

Peak renamed First Peoples Mountain was known as Mount Doane after Gustavus Doane who led attack that killed 173 people in 1870

— Victoria Bekiempis | Tuesday 14 June 2022

Yellowstone national park. Photograph: Matthew Brown/AP

Yellowstone national park has renamed the peak that was once known as Mount Doane to First Peoples Mountain, in a decision to strip from the famed wildlands an “offensive name” evoking the murders of nearly 200 Native Americans, officials said.

In a 9 June announcement, National Park Service authorities also said they might weigh similar renamings in the future.

The 10,551-ft mountain had been named after Gustavus Doane, a US army captain. Doane was a “key member” of an 1870 expedition before Yellowstone became the country’s first national park, authorities said.

But earlier the same year of the expedition, Doane helmed an attack on a band of Piegan Blackfeet in retaliation for the purported murder of a white furrier. This assault, now known as the Marias Massacre, resulted in the killing of at least 173 Native Americans, authorities said.

The victims included numerous women, elders and children who contracted smallpox. “Doane wrote fondly about this attack and bragged about it for the rest of his life,” the National Park Service said.

The new First Peoples name was “based on recommendations from the Rocky Mountain Tribal Council, subsequent votes within the Wyoming Board of Geographic names, and [support] of the National Park Service,” officials added. These entities ultimately forwarded this name to the US Board on Geographic Names this month.

That board, which is responsible for maintaining uniformity in geographic name usage across the federal government, voted 15-0 to affirm the renaming, officials said. Yellowstone recently reached out to the 27 tribes associated with the park and “received no opposition to the change nor concerns”.

“Yellowstone may consider changes to other derogatory or inappropriate names in the future,” officials also said in their announcement.

This renaming comes as the US Department of the Interior ramps up efforts to rename hundreds of geographic formations deemed to be offensively titled. The interior secretary, Deb Haaland, the first Native American to hold a cabinet secretary position, issued an order in November 2021 that officially declared “squaw” to be a “derogatory” word.

Haaland’s order required that the Board of Geographic Names come up with a process to remove that word from federal use. The department, in February of this year, released a list of potential replacement names for more than 660 geographic sites which included the word.

She also issued an order that created a federal advisory committee “to broadly solicit, review, and recommend changes to other derogatory geographic and federal land unit names”.

“Words matter, particularly in our work to make our nation’s public lands and waters accessible and welcoming to people of all backgrounds,” Haaland said. “Consideration of these replacements is a big step forward in our efforts to remove derogatory terms whose expiration dates are long overdue.”

The renaming of geographic formations comes amid a push to remove Confederate symbols across the US in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in May 2020. More than 200 Confederate monuments and memorials have been renamed, removed, or relocated, according to the New York Times.

[meenophoto]

We get out of dodge one step ahead of the next big storm coming into the mountains. (at Squaw Valley, Lake Tahoe) https://www.instagram.com/p/CcajSEWrXuE/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[robertscastellini]

Some of the Largest Ski Resorts

Ski Resorts are towns and villages in winter sports areas that provide housing, equipment rental, ski schools, and ski lifts for skiing and snowboarding. There are many ski resorts in the United States. As of 2021, there were 470 skiing locations in the United States in operation. New York State has the highest number of ski resorts in the United States, with 49 ski resorts. Michigan comes in the second position, with 39 ski resorts. Wisconsin and Colorado come in the third position with 30 ski resorts each. Here are the largest ski resorts in the United States. Park City, Utah, is one of the ski areas in the United States. Park City, Utah, is the classic ski town due to its close access to a major airport, its array of pubs and restaurants, and its ability to appeal to the wealthy and the average person. Vail bought Park City Mountain Resort in 2015 and united it with Canyons Resort, resulting in the largest ski area in America (about 7,300 acres). The second-largest ski resort in the United States is the Big Sky resort in Montana. Big Sky, Montana's ski resort, was formerly the largest in the United States, but Park City, Utah's expanding ski resort, has surpassed it. Big Sky did something similar to Park City a few years back when it absorbed its defunct neighbor Moonlight Basin, resulting in a 5,800-acre ski resort with the moniker "America's Biggest Skiing." Big Sky is connected to a 2,200-acre ski resort by lifts and ski slopes. It now has 8,000 acres, making it the largest in the United States and the second-largest in North America. The catch is that the Yellowstone Club owns the added acres. To become a member of the Yellowstone Club, one will have to invest millions of dollars in the property. The next on the list is the Vail resort in Colorado. Vail, Colorado, was formerly the third-largest ski resort in North America and the second-largest ski resort in the United States but fell to fourth following Park City's $50 million expansion. It has a total area of 5,289 acres. The fourth-largest ski resort in the United States is the Heavenly Mountain Resort in California. With 4,800 acres, Heavenly Mountain Resort, another Vail Resorts ski resort that straddles the California-Nevada border. The Mt Bachelor in Oregon comes in fifth place. Mt Bachelor in Oregon recently expanded its terrain by 500 acres. It has grown to 3,683 acres, putting it in the fifth position in the United States and eighth in North America in terms of size. Mt Bachelor has twelve ski lifts in operation. Tubing, snowshoeing, and dog-sledding trips are also available at the resort. The Squaw Valley Ski Resort in California is the sixth largest ski resort in the United States and the ninth position in North America. It has a landmass of 3600 acres. The seventh-largest ski resort in the United States is Mammoth Mountain in California. It is also the tenth-largest ski resort in North America. The Mammoth Mountain has a landmass of 3500 acres, only 100 acres smaller than the Squaw Valley resort.

[sprntrco]

Back in the good ol USA and went straight to the mountains. Look at that #big #white #whale!!! #airstream #sprintervan looked pretty lux. The awning was really slick. Almost looked invisible. Lots of Sprinter vans everywhere. #Mercedes #Benz #sprintervan #sprntr #vanlifesprinter #sprntrco #van #vangram #vanstagram #vanspotting #vanlife #adventuremobile #4x4 #4x4van #sprintervan4x4 #907sprinter (at Squaw Valley, Lake Tahoe) https://www.instagram.com/sprntr.co/p/CY1vw1sO55h/?utm_medium=tumblr

[togachipblog]

Tahoe Chips

Toga Chip Gal and I went on a vacation, felt more like a second honeymoon, to Lake Tahoe, which is truly God's country.  While there, in the breezeway of a local super market chain, Raley's, we discovered a display for Tahoe Chips.  I contacted the owner of the company, Tom Keefer, to learn about his company.

Tom, along with his brother Mike and their childhood friend Dan Brinker have created many brands, including Wild California, but Tahoe Chips was Tom's creation.  Since he was five years old, Tom has lived, worked and played in Lake Tahoe. In 2015, Tom developed Tahoe Chips to celebrate his favorite place with the hope that the company will be successful enough that he will be able give back by donating a portion of the proceeds to a local charity.  This explains the company's name, Friends of Tahoe.  

The product has been on the market since 2017.  The chips come in the following four flavors: Bar-B-Que, Jalapeno, Salt & Vinegar and Sea Salt,  

The company's motto is "Crisp as the Lake."  Tom explained that when you jump into Lake Tahoe, its cold and that feeling inspired the tagline.  The bags display some of the major the activities in the Lake Tahoe area:  biking, hiking, sailing, and skiing.    

Currently the chips are available at select Raley's and Safeway grocery stores as well as about 60 independent stores in the San Francisco Bay area of California.   The company's billing name is Blue Water Foods, as Lake Tahoe is one of the bluest lakes in the world.   The AAA Nevada Tour Book provides the following description of Lake Tahoe.

Lake Tahoe was named "big water" by the Washoe Indians.  According to Washoe legend, it was created during the pursuit of an innodent Native American man by an Evil Spirit.  In an attempt to ward off the Evil Spirit, the Great Spirit bestowed upon the pursued man a branch of leaves, promising that each leaf dropped would magically produce a body of water that would impede the Evil Spirit's chase.  The man, however, dropped the entire branch in fright, creating the giant lake.

It is estimated that Lake Tahoe holds enough water to cover the entire state of California to a depth of 14 inches, its average depth is 989 feet; the deepest point is 1,645 feet, making Tahoe the third deepest lake in North America.  The water is remarkably clear, deep blue and also 97 percent pure - nearly the same level as distilled water.  The first 12 feet below the surface can warm to 68 F in summer, while depths below 700 feet remain at a constant temperature of 39 F.

Twelve miles wide and 22 miles long, this "lake in the sky" straddles the California/Nevada line at an elevation of 6,229 feet.  It lies in a valley between the Sierra Nevada range and an eastern offshoot, the Carson Range.  The mountains, which are snow-capped except in late summer, rise more than 4,000 feet above Tahoe's resort-lined shore.  Most of the surrounding region is covered by the Eldorado, Humboldt-Toiyabe and Tahoe national forests.  

Immigrants and miners were lured to the rugged Sierras by tales of fortunes made during the California gold rush.  The discovery of the Comstock Lode increased traffic and depleted the Tahoe Basin's natural resources to a dangerously low level.  Between 1860 and 1890 lumber was needed for fuel and to support the web of mines constructed beneath Virginia City, Nev.  The subsequent decline of the Comstock Lode spared many thousands of trees.  

By the eraly 20th century lake Tahoe was a retreat for the rich, with luxurt lakeside hotels springing up along its shores.  After roads were paved during the 1920s and '30s, the lakeshore was no longer an enclave only for the wealthy.

The landscape is often snow-covered in winter, and skiing and snowboarding enthusiasts head to well-known areas like Diamond Peak, Heavenly and Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows (home of the 1960 Winter Olympics).  Despite cold winters, however, the lake never freezes over due to the constant flow of water from the bottom to the surface.  Popular summer recreational activities include mountain biking, hiking, fishing, golfing, kayaking, windsurfing, canoeing, horseback riding, snorkeling, water skiing, boating and swimming.

Enjoy some of the photos from our vacation.  Among the most interesting were the site of the Ponderosa Ranch from television's Bonanza, the former CalNev Lodge once partially owned by Frank Sinatra, and Emerald Bay and its Vikings Holm.  Read all about the latter

http://vikingsholm.com/index.html.

What corporate titan has purchased three homes to be knocked down to build a mega mansion in Incline Village and also purchased the old Ponderosa Ranch to use as a staging area and also purchased the CalNeva Lodge and Casino?  Email me your answer at TogaChipGuy@gmail.com. Enjoy Lorne Greene, Bonanza's Ben Cartwright, singing the theme song.

Hear the Man in Black, Johnny Cash's, version. 

The Toga Chip Guy

[thehikingviking]

Waucoba Mountain & Wunupu Peak from Whippoorwill Flat

There were many reasons for me to visit Waucoba Mountain, but whenever I thought about actually climbing it, the conditions were either too warm or too snowy. We were having a very dry autumn, so I planned a mid-November trip with Brett Marciasini, knowing this peak was high on his to-do list. We each booked a motel room in Big Pine where we met the night before. The next morning we drove his car to the trailhead, while I left my Jeep with Asaka back in town so she and Leif could go sight seeing. We used Google Maps to navigate us to the trailhead, but I do not recommend this. We started up Waucoba Road towards Death Valley, but the app had us turn off the pavement too soon. The key is to wait for the proper Waucoba Saline Road, which is graded and probably passable with 2WD vehicles in dry conditions. We followed this road to Whippoorwill Flat then followed a 4WD spur road west through the forest between Waucoba Mountain and Wunupu Peak, also known as Squaw Peak. We could have parked closer to Waucoba Mountain, but I wanted to combine both peaks into one outing, and our parking spot reflected a trailhead midpoint between the two peaks. Once we could drive no further we parked the car and began our hike. To the northwest was Wunupu Peak, our secondary objective.

We hiked through a high desert forest looking for, but not finding any cairns or signs of past hikers. We weaved around patches of sage brush and followed washes whenever they led in the right direction. The summit was not far away, but there was some nonnegligible elevation to be gained.

Once at the base of the the massif we began to climb more steeply. To the northeast was Last Chance Mountain.

My pace was slower than my liking, and I wondered if Brett would soon become annoyed with my frequent breaks.

Through the trees was Wunupu Peak, our secondary objective for the day.

Brett was too kind to complain, but even if he did, we had plenty of daylight hours to complete our modest little loop. This trip would be much easier than our trip to the Inyo Mountains earlier that year when we traverse from New York Butte to Mount Inyo, however this was the high point of the range.

After a boring slog, the grade slowly eased as we approached the rounded summit about 3.5 hours after leaving the car. 

To the south were New York Butte, Keynot Peak and Mt Inyo.

To the southwest were Mt Whitney, Mt Williamson, Mt Keith and University Peak.

To the west were Mt Pinchot and Split Mountain.

To the northwest were North Palisade, Mt Sill, Mt Agassiz, Cloudripper, Mt Humphreys and Mt Tom.

To the north were Glass Mountain Ridge and White Mountain.

To the northeast were Eureka Valley and Last Chance Mountain.

To the southeast were Dry Mountain and Death Valley National Park.

I walked around climbing several boulders which competed for the high point.

I still felt weak, but the hard part was over. I sat down and pecked at some snacks. I couldn’t figure out if I was dehydrated, getting sick, lacking sleep or feeling the effects of altitude. Whatever was bothering me made the summit not as enjoyable as I hoped it would be. After our break, we continued north along the ridgeline.

At first it was hard to see any landmarks though the forest, so we aided our navigation with GPS.

At an opening, Wunupu Peak came into view.

Our descent was mostly smooth sailing, but we ran into some slight bushwhacking across the final quarter mile to the saddle. Once at the saddle we took another break. I still was feeling a bit off, and I didn’t want to climb the remaining 700 ft to the summit of the bonus peak. To the northwest was Andrews Mountain.

To the north was Wunupu Peak.

To the east was Northern Death Valley National Park.

Once I felt ready, we began our climb up the white limestone.

-Ancient Bristlecone Pine

-North Face of Waucoba Mountain

The color of the rocks changed as we climbed higher. The route I took was loose and brushy; not my idea of fun.

After a steep initial climb, we reached a plateau. The summit stood on the northern end.

We reached the summit a few minutes later. It was a brushy summit and views were obstructed. I was a little disappointed. To the west was the Sierra Nevada.

To the east was Northern Death Valley National Park.

To the south was Waucoba Mountain.

I still felt weak, so we took another long break on the summit. Once I was ready, we re-crossed the plateau and descended down the steep eastern slopes of the peak.

The descent was slow and hard on my knees. At a lower point on the mountain, the ground became more loose so we were able to heel plunge, losing elevation quickly.

Once at the toe of the mountain, we followed compacted desert concrete through an open forest. All of a sudden I was feeling great. The lighting made the area incredibly beautiful and the temperature in the shade was optimal. We concluded that I was feeling the effects of altitude earlier in the day.

We followed a wash downhill in the general direction of the car.

We climbed out of the wash at a cairn and used GPS to navigate the rest of the way.

I tried to do the last half mile or so without GPS but Brett wasn't so keen on playing my silly game. It took longer than we would have liked, but we got the job done. I was eager to see Leif and Asaka so we drove straight back to Big Pine.

Asaka and Leif had spent their day in Bishop, which is a big city when compared to Big Pine. I owed them a family day for Sunday.