California Skiing: Nice And Warm!

Mark Nadell, the Far West Nordic Coordinator dropped us some lines and some photos.

The Far West is the West Coast of USA and Mark is located in Truckee, California.

Fasterskier.com readers, especially Europeans might mostly associate California with beaches, surfing, Hollywood and Los Angeles. The reality is in fact that the California Mountains especially in the Lake Tahoe, Truckee area receives some of the heaviest snowfalls in World.

Fasterskier.com staff has skied at numerous famous ski resorts and ski towns in both North America and Europe, but we have never seen the amount of snow we experience when we go to races at places like Royal Gorge, California.

Unbelievable is all we can say — sometimes the snow is close to the power lines! The temperatures are almost always pleasant in California. Cold weather racing hardly ever exist. Two years ago we did a race at Royal Gorge and the temp was 15-20F at the start — that most have been a “cold record”. The standard is more like: skip your long underwear, wear sun lotion, consider a T-shirt and don’t forget your sunglasses.

 There are also several very good races in this area like The Great Race and The California Gold Rush. We’ll report from them later this season.

Mark’s comments:

“I thought I’d drop you a line and some photos. There’s been so much talk (and complaining) all over the country about how cold it is everywhere, lack of snow in places and lousy weather. Nobody is commenting on the fact that, for the second year in a row at the least, we’ve had incredible snow and mostly great weather for skiing here in the sunny Sierra.  .

Minus 30 in Michigan, freezing rain and subzero for Nationals in Maine, etc. etc. Not here. Today it was snowing at one of our local high school races — the first time we’ve had anything but sunny skies for any of the races. And you can see from the pictures, it didn’t stop our kids from enjoying the weather”.