STUPID SKI TOURS: The 2017 Project

A massive water year led to flooding, rain saturated snow, buried chairlifts, ski area closures, and far more digging and water management than humans should ever be expected to do. But it also kept the resorts open well into the summer. As we skied lifts in April, May, June and July, it seemed like even August might be fossil-powered, leaving only September and October to complete a cycle of skiing every month for a full year. Why not? Jeff had previously done a calendar ski year in Europe and declared that he couldn't be bothered, though most of us consider glaciers to be cheating.

Turned out that July was the last lift assist, and the thick--but extremely wet and not solidly frozen--snowpack vanished at an astonishing pace. But there was just enough patchiness left in the Tahoe/Truckee area to pull the deed off without resorting to weekend road-tripping to the volcanoes or the east-side. However, the team had to endure withering criticism from locals (Will Richardson) about the length of our runs, and some random abuse by other hikers on the trail...strangely, some people just don't get it.

There was a fair bit of planes-trains-and-automobiles (actually, binoculars-car-bike-hike) logistics involved to reach the remaining snow, and even to locate it in the first place. By November, the lifts were open again--but just barely--in a maddening return to drought.

Just to be safe, despite the marginal conditions we all made sure to ski in November and December to tag the calendar year, as well as the 12-month ski continuum, since none of our feeble memories could dredge up for certain whether we had skied in the previous November. That means that, technically, our run continues and we could (potentially) extend our record by doing the same thing next summer. Hm...

Who?: Faerthen, Jim, Beth, Mike, Kim.

Gear recommendation: a serious sense of humor.

More photos here.