News / Articles

Heavenly Mountain Resort straddles the California/Nevada state line at the south end of Lake Tahoe. It features 97 trails and is a solidly intermediate mountain with about 60% to 80% of the terrain rated as blue. Tahoe is a Native American word meaning lake.

We stayed at the Forest Suites Resort, a short walk to the gondola. The Resort provided generous daily (hot and cold) breakfast that made up for the property’s few shortcomings. Our condos were a bit old and redesigned to hold more beds, leaving no closet space. To be more accurate, in our condo (I did not visit other condos), the master bedroom had a tiny closet. The other room with two queen beds had no closet at all. The condo nonetheless was warm, clean, quiet, and the beds very comfortable. Ironically, in the master bedroom, next to its tiny closet, there was a long, narrow space (roughly 4 ft. wide and 12 ft. deep) with no door or obvious purpose, although there was an ironing board folded up at the end of it. The space had all the appearance of the fabled hole-in-the-wall. Check out my photos on the club’s Facebook page. The daily 4:00-5:00 p.m. social in the resort’s lobby was a good place to meet others and make new friends.

It was fun spending time with our new club members (socially and skiing), Debbie and Bernie Glenn, and Mary Jane Lyons and Trey Diamonstein. Trey’s bright-colored shirts were always a topic of conversation.

3 February 2024 – Left ORF on time, arrived at DEN fifteen minutes ahead of schedule, but snowing. We had to wait two hours to deplane due in part to technical issues with another plane that was stuck at our gate. We ended up on another concourse with a much shorter time to get to the departing gate. We practically walked from one end of the airport to the opposing end, as fast as we could, with no time for a bathroom break or to grab food to go. After the runway was cleared of snow and our plane was heavily de-iced, we left DEN for SMF (Sacramento), California. The two-hour bus trip to Heavenly Village from the airport was uneventful, but due to the looming snowstorm, our scheduled one-hour grocery stop was canceled. We arrived at the village 2½ hours late after traveling for 18 to 20 hours.

4 February 2024 – A large group of us, eager to ski, went up the gondola as soon as it opened: Anne MacKenzie, Valerie Grason, Cathy Margiotta, Steve Liberman, Tom Crockett, Jay Slocum, Debbie and Bernie Glenn, and I. We had no idea what was in store up the mountain. We came to ski and we skied, even though it was windy, foggy, snowing hard, visibility was very low, and nothing was groomed. We didn’t care. We skied in fresh powder; the snow was fluffy as the clouds. Some of us loved it. Some of us not so much. Fog and low visibility made skiing more challenging since none of us were familiar with the mountain. To avoid getting lost and stranded on the mountain overnight, we skied together as a pack. Safety in numbers. It was a case of the blind leading the blind. Tom kindly took it upon himself (was drafted actually) and used a paper trail map to navigate us through the slopes. With near whiteout conditions, visibility was so poor that Tom would ski one or two hundred yards or so and wait for the rest of us. Had he skied farther, we would not be able to see him.

Also up on the mountain, John Natterer and Paul James were exploring on their own. Later that night I heard them say they skied quite a bit of the terrain and really liked it.

About 12:30 p.m. we learned that the gondola, the main and scenic venue to and from the mountain, was shut down due to heavy wind and snow. After waiting in line for more than half an hour at the Stagecoach Lodge on the Nevada side, we took the courtesy shuttle back to the village. Later that night we learned that we in fact had skied in a Pineapple Express (a.k.a. “atmospheric river”) that day and lived to brag about it.

In retrospect, skiing in such conditions tested our courage, and challenged our skills and athletic conditioning. We faced our fear and relied on each other’s wisdom to navigate the unknown terrain/slopes. The challenges of this day made skiing on the following sunny day “like buttah” (borrowing from Mike Myers’s SNL skit).

The BRSC après-ski event at Harrah’s was interesting. I was ten minutes late to the event, the food line was long, and by the time I made it up the line, some items had run out. It was a good day to be vegetarian. There was, however, no shortage of beer and wine. With two tickets per person and some not drinking alcohol, there were plenty of extra tickets. Nonetheless, the event served its purpose. I met a few people from other clubs and had a very nice conversation with the Hutsons, our friends from the Mogul club in VA Beach. We talked about possibly having more joint events between our two clubs, maybe bicycling, hiking, potluck, whatever, before 2025 ski season.

5 February 2024 – The weather report could not have been more wrong. The previous night’s prediction of a 50-50 chance of closing the whole mountain was abandoned in the morning in the face of blue sky and light winds in the village. Some were persuaded by the forecast and the fog on the mountain top to stay off the mountain and chose this as their day off. The rest of us hoped the storm would hold off and went up the mountain. And what a bluebird day it was. Picturesque. A clear view of the dark evergreen trees and the blue lake below from the top of the mountain at 10,040 ft. is what made Heavenly such a desirable ski destination. As expected, by midmorning the crowd picked up. We speculated that the many local youth got infected with a bluebird-flu that followed the snowstorm and came to the mountain seeking a cure. The weather turned once again in the afternoon and more than an inch of snow was deposited at the base in the village by the next morning. In fact, during our week-long trip, it snowed at least a little bit every day. We skied until 2:00 p.m. when clouds and fog started creeping in and substantially reduced the visibility.

And Paul got a good deal on a very nice pair of Volkl Mantra's at one of the ski shops in town!

6 February 2024 – Once again, we followed Tom from the California side to Nevada side and back. As Steve eloquently put it, we skied all day on one slope, it was called Follow Tom (who insists he really had no clue where he was going).

The BRSC après-ski event (at Harrah’s again) was better than the previous one. More food and a better organized event.

7 February 2024 – Anne, Valerie, and I skied with Cathy until around 2:00 p.m. and learned a lot from her. In the morning runs, it was windy and cold on the top. The sky cleared as the day went on and the wind gradually subsided. Valerie and I ventured with Cathy to the hard-to-reach Galaxy area. It was all powder, bumpy with fluffy snow, and far less crowded. The Galaxy lift moved at glacier speed, otherwise a great area to ski. Some of the blue slopes in that part, with knee-high moguls, well qualified as one-diamond black slopes.

8 February 2024 – I skied with Anne, Valerie, Cathy, Jay, and Tom. We took a lot of pictures on the California side of the mountain especially since it was clear at the bottom and we could see the blue lake in the morning sun.
After lunch, we broke off in two groups. Valerie, Tom, and I went on the Nevada side. On our last flight up the Dipper Express lift, we went through three types of snow as the elevation increased. No wonder Eskimos have so many names for snow — by some account, at least twenty-three of them. I don’t know what those names are, so I describe them as best as I can for now:

1. Fluffy, star-shape, the typical snowflakes that gently come down and are beautiful to watch.
2. Tiny ice flakes that came down hard and made a crackling sound when they hit my helmet.
3. Snow balls. Perfectly round, white, solid balls that looked like Styrofoam. I learned later that they are called graupel.

Incidentally, unlike the wet snow we typically have on the East coast, these three types were dry snow. It has snowed every day so far.

The BSRC dinner and dance at Harrah’s was great. The 80’s music brought back memories.

9 February 2024 – Beautiful sunny day. I skied with Anne, Tom, and Cathy and followed them in the woods around the Olympic Downhill run, which despite the intimidating name, is actually a very nice blue. Tom and I quit early and went to explore the town and take a closer look at the lake that was so enticing from the mountain top. The lakefront was disappointing. All private property with a small area that “allows” public access in the winter and charges a fee during the warmer months.

Bluedog Pizza is perhaps the best kept secret in the village. A short walk from the resort and the gondola.

10 February 2024 – Time to head home. What a beautiful sunny day! It looked like it was the best day yet to be on the mountain. As we were heading off the mountain, many locals stricken with the bluebird-flu were heading up the mountain, hauling their skis and snowboards, searching for a cure. The two-hour bus drive through the scenic mountains was a delight. We left the cold weather at the mountain to 60+F at the Sacramento airport. In retrospect, with full breakfast, two après socials, a group dinner, and checking out some of the village restaurants, we managed to eat well without grocery shopping.

Excursions:

• Tom and Steve went on a bus excursion to Northstar on 2/7/2024, north of the lake, on a Blue Ridge Ski Council outing. Northstar is a great place and they had a great time. “Interestingly, they had a black diamond that, despite its name ‘Burnout’, was relatively easy. Nearby was a blue that had two feet of powder and was a lot of hard work to ski. Just goes to show how inaccurate the color coding is,” noted Steve.
  
  
• Cathy and Steve took the bus excursion to Kirkwood on 2/9/2024. The bus had to stop and put on chains and stop on the way back to take the chains off. “The ski resort itself was unbelievably great. I think I had the best ski day of my life. The mountain was just challenging enough and super fun. It had a real interesting feature: a serpentine gully about maybe twenty feet wide. I’ve never seen anything else like it and again it was super fun,” said Steve.
  
  
• Debbie and Bernie Glenn took a day off from skiing in the middle of the week and hiked a 3-mile trail to a vista with a nice view of the lake at the 542 acre Van Sickle Bi-State Park. The park was literally across the street from the Forest Suites Resort with a hiking trail that connects to the Tahoe Rim Trail, a 165-mile trail that circles Lake Tahoe. “We resisted the temptation to hike another mile to reach a waterfall and instead enjoyed the scenery and took photos of the many snowmen along the way,” said Debbie and Bernie. Their photos, posing next to their favorite snowman, are now part of the club trip album and on the club website.

Tom did a fantastic job leading this trip, from his well-thought-out plans and well-organized and researched trip packet, to leading us safely up and down the mountain, to informative texts about the events. As Steve put it, we didn’t have to think. Tom had done all the thinking for us. All we did was show up and ski. Hard act to follow.

 

Photo albums

Highlights (public): Heavenly
Full set (login required): Heavenly | Northstar

Photo credits:  Tom Crockett, Mary Crozier, Bernie Glenn, Valerie Grason, Steve Liberman, Anne Mackenzie, Mahyar Malekpour, Cathy Margiotta