Eight more inches of fluff overnight, that’s on top of what the ski area up the road reported a couple days ago, 56″ in four days, 308″ so far this season, nearly half of that just in January so far, yee freakin’ haah! Feeling thoroughly blessed, before dawn I cleared the driveway by hand because I just didn’t even want to hear and smell that infernal combustion on such a pristine morning.
Like how the tree shadow bends where the slope angle changes
Looking down the ridge you see the treed knob at the end is out of line, where the west shore fault has slipped laterally over time, cutting across this shared medial moraine and that of it’s sister ridges, and tipping up a rare remnant of Sherwin Era glacial debris on that knob, above the reach of the smaller, more recent Tahoe and Tioga glacial eras.
All this snow has turned our forests into sculpture gardens
There is a three foot tall cube of colorful exotic rock some glacier left here that I like to sit on, now it’s not even a bump.
can see my tracks between the trees below
Our snowpack this year is already demonstrably deep, getting up to the lichen line, entraining boughs that would normally stand clear.
can see the crown of a huge old Sugar Pine from up on the ridgetop
This old giant is 6+ feet in diameter. I love to climb around in its crown with my eyes.
I skied down to the matriarch Sugar Pine, kicking up my heels for it’s amusement, as well as my own.