Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Lake Tahoe March 2010


Megan Ginter and I, Randa Shahin have been talking about taking a road trip together for a long time. Fortunately the cards all played out well and we were able to jump in the car together and start making our way down to Lake Tahoe, Ca. We chose to take the scenic route, through the cascades of Oregon, past Bend and Klamath Falls. The view on the way down was beautiful. We took advantage of a few places to stop and take a break while taking in the breath taking views.

With one days drive we made our way to Incline Village on the north shore of the lake to stay with good friend and Ride teammate, Laurie Currier. Even though she was super busy and her dog had to go through a scary surgery during our stay, she was most hospitable. Both Megan and I were bummed she couldn't shred with us, but we were understanding of her circumstances.

Thanks to Mike Basich, Megan and I had two day complimentary tickets to North Star. The first day there was a good amount of new snow. We explored the resort a little bit and took advantage of the pow considering the northwest has been lacking that fluffy white stuff most of the season. Once most of the snow was tracked out, we went through the Stash. If you are not familiar with the Stash, it is basically a log jib park that goes in and out of the trees down a run.

We spend a lot of time hiking that day to get some shots with the Go Pro. Unfortunately, since we are just getting used to the Go Pro we accidentally deleted all of the shots we got that day. That turned out to be a good thing though, because the next day we ended up getting shots that were way better than the day before. There was also this nice photographer that was willing to take pictures for a second. Luckily, he got a really good photo of Megan on the cabin jib. After spending two days hiking and filming at North Star we decided to top of the end of the riding day with a beer break on the shores of the beautiful blue Lake Tahoe.

The next day we met up with Mike Basich to take a few runs. Again, thanks to Mike we had the pleasure of riding Sugar Bowl on the house. From the top of Sugar Bowl we dropped the back side of the resort and went to ASR.The pow was amazing and the experience was unforgettable. We explored the backside a little bit, eventually taking a run all the way down to Donner Lake. At one point we had to walk through a train tunnel that was really long. Due to the length there was one point were there was no light at all and you had to feel the side of the all to take slow steps through. Cell phones couldn't even make a dent in the vast emptiness of light to shed even a slight glow of assistance.

Originally, we went to Tahoe to have a chance to compete in the Billabong Flaunt-it competition series. Although, while down in Tahoe we learned that registration was full. Therefore we started making our way back to Washington to get a little local shredding in before the Ride Shakedown that was taking place at Summit at Snoqualmie the following weekend.