In what has become an annual tradition (see 2006 & 2007), Dan and I drove to our Dad's house in Cottonwood (Northern California) to hang out and ski at Mt. Shasta Ski Park. Since his house is just 90 minutes from the slopes, it's the perfect rendezvous point and you can't beat the room rate. Mt. Shasta is a relatively small ski area with 3 lifts, 32 trails and 425 acres of skiable terrain. The best part is that there are no crowds which means there are no lift lines.
On Monday (25th), the three of us hit the slopes at about 9:30am. Over the previous 2 days, Shasta had received 14 inches of snow. Therefore, we had nothing but fresh powder to ski on - nice! It was the best possible ski day you could hope for. We started with a couple of easy runs to warm up, then quickly made our way to steeper terrain. The conditions were very forgiving and we had a blast taking run after run with no lines (our longest lift line was 30 seconds) and very few people on the hill to avoid. After more than 20 runs in over 5 hours, we decided to call it a day and save our legs for the next day.
We got up on Tuesday (26th) and Dad was sore from the day before, so he decided to skip the second day of skiing. Dan and I felt good, so we headed up for another day. The weather had warmed a bit and there was mostly blue sky. Since the weather was so warm (mid 50's), we knew the snow would turn a little slushy as the day wore on, so we hit the slopes running and packed in as many runs as we could in the morning. After our lunch break, we did several more runs before Dan got tired at about 2pm. I wasn't done, however, so Dan went back to the lodge while I skied for another hour. Even though the snow on the runs in direct sunlight was getting slushy, we were still able to find runs with great snow throughout the day.
Overall, it was a fun time hanging out, skiing and playing Guitar Hero ;-) I can't wait until next year.
Here's the tally of the number of runs each of us made:
Dave: 22 Monday + 23 Tuesday = 45 Total
Dan: 21 Monday + 18 Tuesday = 39 Total
Dad: 21 Monday + 0 Tuesday = 21 Total
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