I've been lousy about updating the blog lately, and I'm sorry about that.

Last weekend I went to North Lake Tahoe with my buddy Kristen. We left early Saturday morning. Didn't have much of plan of where to ski, but we knew that we wanted to hit Squaw at least one of the days. Since her (share) house is right near Squaw, we decided to go directly there on Saturday morning. While we in line to buy lift tickets (the longest line we saw all weekend) we made the snap decisionto ski Squaw both days. At $113 for 2 consecutive days, it's still pricey, but $57.50 a day is easier to swallow than $68 for one day (or whatever it is). It was a great decision.

Squaw is an awesome place, even with onl half the lifts running. It's massive. The scenery is spectacular with soaring rocky peaks and views of distant Lake Tahoe. When it's 70 degrees, there isn't a cloud in the sky and the crowds are nowhere to be found, it's even better.

But 2 days of skiing in the sundrenched corn snow burned me to a crisp. My hairline was burned. My ears were burned. My wrists were bruned. My forearms were burned. And, as the title says, my elbows were burned. Did I put on sunblock? Sure did. I slathered on the SPF 30. The problem is that when you can only stay in the sun without protection for about 30 seconds without starting to fry, SPF 30 only gives you about 15 minutes of protection. So even though I kept reapplying, I just kept burning. It was a small price to for absolutely glorious spring skiing.

The snow was a little on the soft side, but it was so, so fun. Soft snow and soft moguls allow me to take on terrain that would other wise be off limits. So I had a chance to ski Headwall and Siberia Express, easily pushing aside the mushy moguls on Squaw's steepest slopes, some of which gave me vertigo, the fall was so sharp. Squaw is sort of an unusual ski area in that the runs have no posted names and therefore have no ratings. The lifts have a general rating and you ski runs off the lift based on your skill level. The problem is that if a lift services terrain from blue to double black diamond, you sort of have to feel your way around the mountain to get on the appropraite terrain. I've heard many stories of porr beginners who were stuck on the mountain for hours trying to pick their way down runs that they inadvertenly landed on. For me this isn't such a problem, but there are runs that I would rather avoid. However with the soft snow, there is a little on the mountain that I can't handle. So no worries. Just fun from KT-22 to Granite Chief.

It was excellent to finally get a lay of the land. The only other time I skied at Squaw was in a blizzard during the Deep Powder Weekend (another skiing weekend that I failed to write about. The snow was incredible, about 2 feet deep. Bu the visibility blew and most of the mountain was closed down. We skied he back of KT-22 all day and had a great time, but I never really got a sense of the size of the magnificence of Squaw Valley.

Sadly, I left my digital camera at home accidentally, but I did take some decent shots with my cellphone.