Local Blessing

My lungs pump cold winter air as I follow the skin track through the snow-covered trees. It’s a magical, windless morning. I feel like I’ve stepped into a candy land. Somewhere behind the gray-blue clouds, the sun is rising on the other side of the lake. It’s February in Lake Tahoe, in the middle of the strangest winter I’ve experienced here. We’ve been waiting for a storm like this for weeks. As my friends fled to snowier locales, I stayed home. And my gamble paid off. A cold, calm storm delivered perfect low-density, bottomless, weightless snow. Champagne powder, some call it. When people say the Sierra sees only cement, I remember days like this one and laugh. Some say this last winter in Tahoe was like a pendulum swinging between extremes.

October: a freak storm dumps four feet of snow. November: zero. December: Tahoe gets buried under 214 inches in a week. The December storm smashed a 51-year-old snowfall record on Donner Summit. This is what climate change looks like. We are living it – not in 2030 or 2050, but right now. I’ve learned to take what’s there, to wait until it’s time. Because nature is unpredictable. You never know what tomorrow holds. December was nuts. We had so much snow, people couldn’t get out of their driveways. Roads closed. Plows worked 24-hours. Frozen trees crashed and took power lines down, leaving us in candlelight for days. At one point, almost every road in and out of the Basin was closed, turning Lake Tahoe into a snowbound island.

Ski resorts couldn’t open. Most people were in survival mode. But for myself and a small contingent of backcountry enthusiasts, we were in heaven. Then, the snow stopped, just like that. Not even a sprinkling could pass through the wall of high-pressure that clawed us. After the snowiest December on record, January was the driest. We went to the beach and harvested as much corn skiing as we could find. It’s in times of famine when people show their true commitment to their home turf. Professional athletes and snow enthusiasts alike flocked to other locations. I dialed the numbers on my list of contacts: Cody, Jeremy, Daron, Michelle, Nick, Elyse, Connery, Amie. They were all on the road.

The ones who stayed home had families and jobs, like Brennan Lagasse. Not the big name skier Tahoe is known for, but I’d argue he’s the ultimate dark horse who skis more than most professional skiers while juggling work and family. My friend and fellow ski partner, Drew Petersen, also stayed home. He’d recently moved here and was keen to explore his new home range. Wanderlust is a skier’s comfort zone. It’s never been easier to chase powder, given the Ikon and the Epic Passes. Sometimes traveling pays off, and you hit the timing right and score enviable turns in untracked powder. Yet winter is erratic everywhere, not just in Tahoe. And chasing powder often feels like a never-ending slog.

I’m learning it’s sometimes better to stay put, to study the snowpack in the mountains of my backyard, and keep the faith that snow will come. “Don’t get me wrong – the travel that skiing has afforded me is awesome and I wouldn’t trade it for anything,” Drew told me. “But I moved to Truckee last year in the hope of developing a sense of home in a real ski town. I wanted to learn the mountains, make friends, connect with the community, and of course, score some of the legendary skiing that Tahoe is known for.” Our patience paid off when a storm finally came in late February. Brennan, Drew and I were the holdouts: committed, present and ready to strike despite the challenges of a feast-or-famine season.

We set off on the skin track before dawn, giving us ample time to get our fill in the deep, cold snow before Brennan had to get to work. We were so starved for pow, we made every minute count. The clouds remained thick, dampening the light, circumventing my vision for a sunrise shoot. But on the descent, when we couldn’t feel bottom, I realized the stars were still aligned. I just had to be open to what was out there, to what nature wanted to deliver, on her time. It’s an art we’re all trying to learn. When everyone else had given up on Lake Tahoe, we scored a February storm that all three of us will remember for the rest of our lives. “I never heard a story from anyone that they scored deeper, better skiing than we did,” Drew said.

“These deep powder days aren’t simply the days we dream about. These are the days we plan our lives around. In every deep powder turn, every face shot, every chat on the skintrack, the decisions to uproot my life, move to Tahoe, and stick around my new home were affirmed.”