Heavenly at Lake Tahoe - 20th & 21st January 2007
This is the first weekend we spent skiing/snowboarding at the Heavenly Resort at Lake Tahoe. There were 6 of us who had never done this before, so we all decided to try snowboarding. We got a group lesson on Saturday were we learnt the basics, then on the Sunday we went off on our own to practice. There were also 5 others who were more experienced skiers. The 11 of us stayed together in a lodge near Heavenly.
Lake Tahoe has many ski resorts on the mountains around it, Heavenly is just one. Lake Tahoe is in the Sierra Mountains on the California/Nevada state boarder. Heavenly is about 4 hours drive from where I live, which but American standards is nearby! It hadn't snowed for a while, so you can see there is no snow on the trees. To fresh snowy landscape go to pictures from our second trip, in February.
You can also watch Michael's video of our tip to Tahoe on youtube. It's pretty good! The guy at the start telling a joke is Miles, our snowboard instructor.
Heavenly has slopes covering an entire mountain. This is a view from a lift down over the main lodge and one of the 'learner' slopes, where I spent most of my first weekend. Heavenly is right on the state boarder, so some of the slopes are in Nevada! I never left California, but the more experienced skiers went all over.
This person is doing what all beginner snowboarders spend a lot of time doing - trying to get up! I spent a lot of my first weekend either on my bum or on my knees. Both became very, very bruised!
This is a view down the second slope that we ran on our first weekend. It looks pretty but in fact when this picture was taken it was so windy that I got blown up the slope! I moved to a more sheltered slope. :-)
This is a view from a lift, down the mountain side. You can see the edge of Lake Tahoe. Lake Tahoe is huge: 22 miles long and 12 miles wide. It's the 10th deepest lake in the world! (third deepest in North America).
Here's me dressed up in all my snowboard gear - I look a bit like a ninja! I'm all wrapped up because when this was taken it was very windy. In more sheltered spots I was able to unwrap quite a bit!
You can see that it doesn't look very steep, but it was perfect for my first 2 days of snowboarding. Get off the lift was really difficult; I usually fell over.
Here's Jen at the bottom of the second slope we did.