Skiing at Kirkwood

Feb 24th - I left for Kirkwood ski resort at 5am with Philip and his friends, Paul and Jerry. We had a smooth ride all the way to the resort near Lake Tahoe and reached at 10am. When we reach the mountain, it started snowing, my first time I have seen falling snow. At the resort, I headed for my ski lesson after getting my gears. Getting use to walking in the ski shoes is the first uncomfortable thing you must overcome. After only learning how to wedge (slow down), my class took the lift up the mountain for our first ski, the graduation ski. And, boy, is it difficult to get off the lift. I never manage to get off without falling on all four the whole day. We were supposed to ski off the steep landing slope and get off the lift simultaneously. Other than that, skiing was awesomely fun. I skied till the lifts stopped at 4pm. My friends and I headed for our 3-stars hotel and went to a nearby casino hotel for a buffet dinner.

The next morning, I went with Paul to view Lake Tahoe. The snow was so heavy and wind was so strong that even at a few feets from the lake, I couldn't see anything further than the shore. The snow was being blown horizontally, that's how strong the wind was. My plan to learn snow boarding on my second day was dashed when my friends decided to head home at 10am due to the snow storm and we couldn't get to the ski resorts. Along the way home, the roads were either closed temporarily or traffic was slow moving due to avalanche and chain controls. We took 16 hours to get back home. Being stranded on the road for that long is really unbearable, I was surprisingly glad to finally see rain after 11 hours of falling snow and being stranded on the mountain roads. I reached home at 4am and left for work at 9am. I am looking forward to my next snow trip.