snow hazards

This last weekend was the annual E/C ski trip which is always awesomely planned and well taken care of and this year was no exception. The only problem was the abundance of snow this year. That can't possibly be a problem you would think but sat, we headed to Heavenly and had an inkling that some high winds were headed our way by noon when we had crossed over to the nevada side. It progressively got colder and when we went up the chair after lunch, we had serious doubts about our safety as the chair swung in the wind. We had somehow got separated from C at this point so I felt a little nervous just trying to head back to the california side without him so we took the safer option of just heading down to the bottom of the nevada side to take the shuttle back to heavenly. I thought I was going to lose a few fingers texting with my bare hands (man I really need a bluetooth helmet) but we managed to find each other at the bottom. Then started the waiting. The line got longer as the afternoon wore on and more and more lifts were shut down. Finally, after 90 minutes of waiting our shuttle showed up. Man what an ordeal - I wasn't sure i liked heavenly that much after that (the blues were kind of skinny and it was ass crowded) but after hearing that it was worse in North Lake tahoe that weekend (almost all the resorts shut down), I guess we did get some skiing in in the morning at least.

The next day, the plan was to go cross country skiing so I could finally use these skate skis that I bought 2 years ago on year end clearance. Alas, right after we said the words "but at least this car can make it out of this tahoe meadows area for sure" (when we were noting the road conditions in our very snow housing community), C and I saw a dip in the road which made us both think in our heads "uh-oh. this might not be good". Then the car dipped down and barreled into the snow below the dip resulting in a mound of snow under my car. So my car is really low - basically the same height as a normal sedan I believe - so any high snow on the ground is cause for some worry. So we were stuck and no amount of digging got us unstuck sadly since all the snow was built up under the snow. Luckily, we were also blocking the only road in and out of the community so soon enough, fellow ski trip friends who were wanting to head home showed up behind us on the road. Then through a combination of some random dude having rope, K having awesome knot skills, and S basically using his car to pull us off the hill of snow, we got free! Phew. it's good to know people with skills. Of course, after this weekend volvos have a bad name for their handling in snow since both volvos on this trip got stuck in the snow. But I blame the other volvo driver for their situation (he had a sedan with no chains...). Now we have a new item to add to our trunk in addition to the ice scraper and shovel - strong sturdy rope.