I finally succumbed to peer pressure from the rest of the house and headed off to Kirkwood instead of Heavenly. It was a good decision.

Kirkwood is about 35 minutes up into the mountains south of South Lake Tahoe, so it doesn't get the crowds that Heavenly, which is right on top of the Stateline casinos. It's nice to be able to hop in the car and be on the slopes in 15 minutes at Heavenly. But it's nicer to get a little further and ski a beautiful and uncrowned place like Kirkwood. I had skied there once or twice on family trips in high school, but with my famous memory, it was like skiing a new resort for the first time.

I drove up with up with Russell. He's one of the resident computer geeks, coding compilers for some small Silicon Valley startup (I didn't realize we still had startups these days). He grew up skiing in Vermont, went to some boarding school with a ski team, so even though he's probably carrying 75 pounds more than the day he graduated, he can still rip it up, but normally only for short periods.

I was going to push him because I needed to feel like I got good value for my lift ticket. We headed out for the backside of the mountain. Immediately there were some glaring differences between Heavenly and Kirkwood besides the crowds. The lifts at Kirkwood are dog slow, but the terrain is much, much steeper. Advantage: Push.

The backside is a huge bowl area accessed by one slower than shit quad chair. Double Diamonds all over the place. It was early, so we stuck to the blues, which at Kirkwood are actually blue whereas at Heavenly which has some absurd trail inflation, the blues are teal. Advantage Kirkwood.

When we headed back to the front side around noon, we met up with Kristen and Ben and tried out the Cornice. The Cornice is one thing. Steep. The lift up there is the only fast detachable quad on the mountain, so it's ferrying skiers and riders up there almost as fast as they can come down, which is damn fast. If the snow was a little better, it would have been great, but much of the top layer had been skied off and the top was icy, which is difficult under normal circumstances, but on a 45 degree pitch, it was extremely challenging. My legs were like noodles when I made it down. Time for lunch.

After lunch, Russell and I discovered chair 2, which a few cruising runs facing the sun so the snow was soft and perfect for the big arcing turns that I like. Just before we called it a day, we decided to see if we take on the Wall. The Wall is steeper than the Cornice. There are signs at the bottom of the lift that say, "Experts Only" in a big black bold font. In case, you don't get it or you don't read English, there's a massive skull and cross bones that should clue you in to the fact that you probably don't belong up there. But should be surprised that you can find gappers plowing down the wall? Of course not.

We get up there and it's late in the day, the clouds are starting the come in the north, the sun is setting, it's cold, and it's the most crowded run we've been on. There are people everywhere waiting to drop into the Wall. As I was standing up there, I was watching this woman who looked like she was on skis for the first time. You just have to shake your head. I waited for the run to get reasonably clear of people, which was really not clear at all, skied far to the left away from most of them and made my way down without incident or much enjoyment, really. I'm going to need to get up there again on a day with a little more snow and far fewer people.

One more run on the backside and another on the sunny Caples Creek and we were done. It was a long, hard, great, beautiful day and I can't wait to come back to Kirkwood. I bought the "ski 2 days in 7 for 88 bucks" pass, so I'll be back next Saturday barring some strange occurrence.

Days Skied This Season: 6