Well Thanksgiving is over again, and I recently spent 3 days in Tahoe. I was riding up at Kirkwood on November 25-27. Conditions for this time of year are spectacular. You wouldn't believe how much coverage there is already.

The conditions on Thursday and Friday were a little less than desirable. There was a good amount of hard pack, but you could find a bit of packed powder if you looked off piste.

Thursday I spent roaming all over the front side just cruising it and taking things easy. Spent a little time in the park ripping the table tops and boxes. Nothing too fancy, just wanted to see if I could still hack it in the park without making a fool out of myself.

On Friday, I managed to slip on some hard pack off a run off Cornice Express. Knocked my chin/jaw on the hard pack and got a nice raspberry underneath my chin. Also banged up a rib or muscle or something in that area. However it wasn't bad enough to get me to stop before the lifts closed on Friday.

On Friday I had two friends taking a snowboarding class at Kirkwood. Get this, their instructor had only been riding for a year! Come on what's up with that. Not only that, but one of my friends got nailed in the back by instructor! That is a ridiculous if you ask me. Something like this should never happen under any circumstances. She had to be taken down the hill by the ski patrol, and spend the rest of the day getting X-rays to see if there were any problems. Fortunately, there wasn't anything that they could find. But Kirkwood didn't even offer to give them tickets, or classes, or pay for the X-rays. This is completely irresponsible. Just goes to show how badly some business can be run. Someone should expect to be sued soon... Don't get me wrong this is my favorite mountain, but hey you still need to take responsibility when you are at fault.

Saturday was a different story. The snow started coming down late Thursday night, and it didn't let up until Saturday afternoon around 2:00PM. The weather was a bit colder on Saturday but there was nothing but powder everywhere you looked! After the snow stopped around 2, the weather warmed up a bit, and the last 2 hours at Kirkwood were phenomenal.

This is probably it for me until Christmas, when I expect to put another 5 days or so in. I might try to sneak in a day before Christmas, but it will take a lot of effort with all of the travel I am currently doing to Hawaii and back. But that's another story.

Scott