Blizzard in Tahoe

Being in the bay area definitely has its perks; you're close to all sorts of beautiful landscapes that are great for outdoor activities. Tahoe is only a 3 hour drive from San Francisco, and we finally had a chance to go this past weekend. Our plan was to leave Thursday afternoon, wake up bright and early Friday for a day of skiing at Northstar, then another day of skiing at Alpine Meadows before heading back on Sunday morning.

However, not all went according to plan. The three hour ride up took 5 hours due to traffic in Oakland and in Sacramento, not to mention a snowstorm that hit the mountains as we were crossing the pass to get into Truckee. We had chains, and once the chains were on, we could only go about 25 mph the last 20 or so miles. It was pretty scary.

Skiing lessons went all right, David picked it up really quickly, and although I felt all right during the lessons, during our runs down the regular slope I had a couple of nasty falls where I hurt my knees, and I wasn't having much fun. I don't think skiing is for me.

When we got back to the hotel, we checked up on the weather to see about the huge storm that was heading in, and when the weatherman predicted near white out conditions for Tahoe Saturday and Sunday, we made the decision to come back a day early. Although we had to give up a day of skiing, we felt we made the right decision for us, and we enjoyed being up in the sierra. (UPDATE: David's boss was also in the Tahoe area over the stormy weekend, and it took him around 9 hours to get back to the bay area; one of my co-workers was also in Tahoe, and they were snowed in so they couldn't leave yesterday, they left at 5 am Monday morning to get to work at 10:30! Looks like we made the right decision!)

Here's a picture taken from my iPhone of the drive out of Truckee, the calm before the storm. I also have a few more pictures posted of my flickr site.