Tahoe: Kirkwood

In January I had an opportunity to check out the Lake Tahoe area for a three day snowboarding excursion. I had never been to the area before so this was all a first for me and I feel like it was a really positive experience overall, but not without it’s adventures and downfalls. After three days I am in no way equipped to write you a guide, but I think I came away with some fairly handy information that you could probably exploit if you were to head that way. I’ll probably have to break this up into several posts.

When I booked my plane tickets at the end of December the snow accumulation at Heavenly was looking pretty bleak. They only had around 50% of the mountain open. I was nervous. I have no interest in spending hundreds of dollars to go out of state and pay for lift tickets to ride groomers all day. Then in the middle of January the skies opened up and the whole region started getting pummeled with snow so we got pretty excited.

Kirkwood

Day one was a Thursday and there was a storm moving through the area. We went to Heavenly but we were stopped short at the ticket window. The ticket fellow warned us that three of the lifts were already shut down due to hight winds and another four would probably be closing as well, making most of the mountain inaccessible. Additionally, they were expecting 130mph winds on top of the mountain so there was also the potential that they would just shut the whole mountain down. “No refunds.” We just weren’t down with paying full price to get kicked off of the mountain so we decided to pick a different mountain. After calling various mountains for snow reports we decided to try out Kirkwood, which is about 45 minutes from Heavenly.

It was snowing and blowing pretty hard at Kirkwood and this turned in to a half day ($56, I think it was $68 for the full day), but Kirkwood isn’t a huge place so I got to see most of the mountain. I started off doing some laps on the Sunrise lift. This area is probably the closest thing Kirkwood has to a “back side”. Visibility was low so I didn’t make it out to an area called The Wave, which looked like it had a ton of potential. I stuck with other runs accessed by taking a right when getting off the lift and cat-tracking over a bit. The upper portion is fairly steep with very few trees and a few rock outcroppings, but once you get into the lower portion everything flattens out and gets a little dull. After 3 laps I had seen everything I wanted to see back there and decided to head back to the main portion of the mountain. To do this, I took Larry’s Lip over to a series of chutes that fall right under the very rocky and dramatic peak of the mountain. I believe the one I took was called Two Man Chute and it offered a really steep shot through some nice, untouched snow. Maybe people stay away because it takes two lifts to lap the area. If you were to shop around you would probably find a half-dozen nice rock drops in this area. I managed to hit a smaller one on my way through. In retrospect, a two-lift lap would have been worth it to hit that area again but I didn’t make it back there again.

I skipped the Wagon Wheel and The Wall area. There are 6 chutes and a lot of double diamond terrain high up and right in the middle of the mountain that looks promising. Next time….

From the Cornice Express lift I traversed across to the Sentinel Bowl area for several laps. This area is a two-lift-lap as well but worth the effort. From what I rode it was my favorite part of this mountain. Sentinel offers some gullies, trees, and small rock outcroppings and drops all through lots of nice snow. I traversed as far to skier’s left as possible to stay in nice powdery snow against the OB rope. Apparently I overlooked a gate that was higher up on the rope and closed the day I was there. It wasn’t until talking to some locals at Heavenly that I found out that a boarder had been buried and rescued in an avalanche in the Palisades area the day before I was there, which was possibly the reason for the closure.

Overall, Kirkwood didn’t seem to bad to me at all. It had a small mountain feel with fun little spots here and there. I could definitely see how the place could grow on a person that rides there a lot. I’m not sure if I would travel all the way from Denver to Lake Tahoe just to exclusive this mountain though. A traveler could probably get everything they would want out of this mountain in one full day, but they could stay entertained for two.

I have lots to tell about Heavenly as well, but I’m going to save it for another day.