[Best place to carve in Northern California]

On 11/5/2015 at 10:34 PM, jishaq said:

 

In Tahoe, Kirkwood is king when it comes to carving.  Most bay area carvers prefer Kirkwood because it has a good variety of intermediate and advanced carving runs that are relatively wide and have a nice consistent pitch.  Carving runs are Lower Zachary, Upper Zachary if you can carve steeps, most runs serviced by The Reut #11 such as Buckboard, Wagon Trail etc; Flying Carpet and Elevator Shaft.  Don't miss Buckboard and Flying Carpet.  Closest economical hotels would be Motel 6 in South Lake Tahoe, and Best Western in Jackson.  

 

Northstar has some good grooming and some great carving runs.  It's also wind-sheltered and a good bet on super windy days when upper Squaw, Alpine, and Kirkwood are on wind hold all day.  Ax Handle, Luggi's, Logger's Loop, Surprise; Challenger and Iron Horse.  On the weekends, Northstar is insanely crowded with gapers, jibbers, and families.  Parking sucks, you have to shuttle from your car.

 

Alpine & Squaw have a combo pass, and affordable accommodations can be found in Truckee, Kings Beach, Tahoe Vista.  I suggest VRBO / AirBNB rather than actual hotels.  Good carving at Squaw would be anything off Shirley Lake chair, sometimes Siberia Bowl before it gets bumped up, most stuff serviced by Gold Coast lift, and you gotta do the top to bottom mountain run a few times.  Dog Leg and Red Dog face can be nice.  And at Alpine Meadows, there's Alpine Bowl, Wolverine Bowl, Idiot's Delight, D8, any runs that pass by Yellow Chair.

 

A word about other people.  On a normal winter day, anywhere in Tahoe is going to be a zoo on the weekends.  You will think it's really uncrowded the first two or three runs, and then the family types with children and people who aren't serious enough to get their shit together and arrive half hour before the lifts start spinning start to trickle in around 9:45-10ish.  After 10, you'll be waiting in lift lines after every single run for 5-15 minutes.  If you are misfortunate enough to be at Northstar or Squaw on a weekend, you can spend a lifetime in the lift lines.  Kirkwood is nice because, though it does get a little impacted around 10AM, people then start to discover other parts of the mountain and between 10-12, people disperse out a little bit and the lift lines aren't so bad.

 

But really ... it's all about Kirkwood.

what about run/lift recommendations for non-extreme carvers?  I have Tahoe Local Epic Pass.  I'm kind of just getting back into snowboarding after a 15 year hiatus.  took the alpine board out two days at Park City and it was fun (but i need a lot of work).  Have soft booted at Heavenly a few times this year but have yet to make it anywhere else.  I remember having fun at Northstar.  Will likely only ride on weekdays.  In addition to the Epic Pass resorts, I will probably also hit Alpine.  Not that good at hard booting on steeper terrain, so prefer mellower slopes.

I have an old '01 Ultra Prime 64

Thanks in advance

[Hardbooter wins Olympic ski race!]

here's the non-NBC-Primetime call w/ her full run.  her reaction is priceless

http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/even-announcers-are-shocked-ester-ledeckas-victory

[Burton Ultra Prime 164 2001...looking for specs please]

Funny, I have the same (or similar) board and was googling to get some info on it.  Went hard booting for the first time in almost 20 years the other day (and first day on this particular board).  Was really fun, but my setup seemed off.  I honestly don't remember how my last board was setup and haven't snowboarded much since 1999 anyway.  Went with 60/54 and bindings have a little bit of toe lift and heel lift.  My old Raichle 124s seemed to disintegrate a little bit w/ every run (plastic buckle release broke, linings on my liners and footbeds separating)

Clearly my equipment is holding me back from shredding LOL.  My technique is probably horrible and my knees don't bend very far anymore.