Ducked out to the Tahoe Meadows area up near Mt. Rose after a morning work session. Arrived a few moments before noon with nothing but thick, impenatrable grey cloud masses looming as far as the eye could see (with the ever-so-small exception of a miniscule window of blue that shown down a wavering ray of sun as I skinned out to the slope for a brief moment of calm-before-the-storm). Geared up fairly quick (I had pre-skinned my skis the night before) and headed out into the bleakness. I managed to tighten my previous 20-minute skin time down to 10 minutes. The snow was noticeably barer than when I had been here at the end of April, so despite having received some new snow in the past few days, the previous pack had melted considerably (rocks that had not been visible priorwere now poking majestically out of the snow). The snow was basically speed slurpee, comprised of compacted and soft ball-bearings of snow. On my first run I scraped down to dirt and rocks on a couple of turns. While setting the boot-pack for lap two, it began to snow lightly. I knocked out lap two and at the bottom was greeted with a clap of thunder. I opted to start heading back, not wishing to incur the wrath of the lightning gods. I set a new boot-pack to position myself for a ski-and-skate back to the parking lot in lieu of skinning. At the top I scanned for lightning and not seeing any, nor having heard any additional thunder, I slipped in a third and final run. Thunder boomed across the skyline just as I finished my run and seemed to follow me all the way back to the Taco Mama. I was de-geared and in the truck just before 1 and around 1:07 I witnessed my first flash of lightning. Uber short day with perfect timing in terms of missing the truly nasty weather.
“The best place in the world to ski is where you’re skiing that day.” — Warren Miller
