the weather gods smiled

Sometime in September, I had a brainstorm, and told D I thought it would be fun to rent a cabin in Tahoe for my birthday this year.

The tricky thing is that my birthday is in late December, and most people are out of town or with their families by then, so that pushed the date up to at least mid-December. I've lived in the Bay Area nearly my entire life, and I'm well aware that early December is very, very risky as far as snow conditions go. D convinced me that it would be fun even if the weather was sucky, just to hang out in a nice house with our friends for a weekend, so we crossed our fingers and put down a rental deposit on a five-bedroom, 4000 sq/ft house near Northstar at the beginning of October.

As luck would have it, the snow started to fall early this year, and by Thanksgiving the lifts were starting to open. The weekend before the trip, Tahoe was hit by a giant storm which deposited over two feet of snow in the North Tahoe area. I was super psyched.

The final count for the trip was thirteen adults, one toddler, and two infants. Eight of us drove up on Thursday night, of which half of us skied on Friday. The conditions were absolutely gorgeous by December standards: packed powder, good coverage, clear blue skies, and mid-40s temperatures. Since there were no lines, we managed to cram in 18 runs that day (mostly Backside and Lookout), which is a new record for me.

The remaining five people arrived on Friday night and Saturday morning, along with what seemed like half of the Bay Area. Despite that, we managed to get another good day on the mountain, before retiring to our cabin for home-cooked chili and late night board games. It was also great to catch up with everyone after having been gone so long on our around-the-world trip.

The next day, yummy burgers at Ikeda's and almost no traffic on the way back capped off an awesome weekend. Thanks, weather gods!