The Retro Weekend went as planned in spite of rather crusty
conditions (after all, what would Marcus Libkind do?) Bob, Cathy,
Phil, Larry, Denise, Alan, Sandra, Jay, and Meg the dog showed up to
ski the classic Meiss Lake - Round Lake tour. All in all it was a
superlative day: Sandra noted that it was the worst day of skiing in
her entire life, and we encountered a level of challenge on
mild-angled slopes that we would normally need to work much harder to
find. But the elements were no match for our intrepid group, who were
not only adept at quick step-turns on the crust, but were snappy
dressers as well. From Jay's wool beret and Larry's granola-eater
knit hat, to the assortment of fine merino undies, we were definitely
dressed to crunch.
Smokin'! With Cathy and Sandra (photo by Jay Howell)
Day #2, we sought to answer the question "where have all the
snowmobiles gone" by skiing from Daggett Pass to Spooner Summit. We
had the trails to ourselves for most of the tour until we got to the
summit area of South Camp Peak, which is sort of the local equivalent
of Alcatraz, but for snowmobile tours instead of ferry tours. Since
we got there first though, we claimed the varnished wood bench
overlooking all of Lake Tahoe for ourselves, and the motorists had to
be content to pose for pictures and talk in southern drawls on the
nearby rocks. However, they did allow Sandra and Cathy to pose in the
saddle of one of their sleds (Cathy, discovering that snowmobiles
have heated seats, is now totally sold on them). From there, we
descended a big perfect beautiful 25 degree open slope, via cautious
traverses, pausing occasionally for kick-turns and to free plates of
rock-hard crust from between our ankles, and then dropped another
thousand feet or so on machine-groomed trails, stepping aside
occasionally to let trains of a dozen or so snomos spew past. We
arrived at the Spooner Summit snowplay & general partying area,
warmed physically by natural fibers, and warmed spiritually by the
moral fiber derived from surviving these two ski tours.
