Skiing at Diamond Peak

2017-02-18

Saturday

After the horrendous traffic we ran into for the previous ski trip, we decided to leave Saturday morning at 4:00am and drive directly to Diamond Peak ski resort. Light snow was forecasted for the weekend, so we decided to take our 4WD SUV instead of our minivan, and boy it was a challenge trying to pack everything and everyone into the smaller SUV.  No traffic driving up until we hit Kingvale, where chain control was in effect due to snowing.  Luckily we were driving our SUV so we didn't have to put on chains.  We arrived at Diamond Peak at 8:30am.   The E's (J's cousins) drove up Friday night to stay in Sacramento, then Saturday morning drove from Sacramento to Diamond Peak.  They arrived after 9:00am, though, and there was no more parking.  They had to park down by the Hyatt and take a shuttle up to Diamond Peak.  

By the time we hit the slopes the snowing had stopped, so it was great.  I had purchased a Lucky Bums ski harness for little J because I wanted to try taking him on the chair lift for the bunny slope (Schoolhouse run).   The harness has a handle in the back which was perfect for hauling little J up and down the chair lift and for picking him up after he fell.  He did great!  I held the harness's long leashes loosely and skied behind him, only pulling on the leashes if he needed to turn or wasn't able to slow down, but it wasn't that often.  He was able to ski down the run, but initially he couldn't really turn by himself and fell over.  After 3 runs he complained he was tired and hungry.  Unfortunately, we had to trek up a slope from the Schoolhouse run back to the main lodge, and little J refused to even stand on his skis, flopping over and complaining he's too tired.  I had to carry him, with his skis on, and struggled to ski/step/slide up the slope and up 2 flights of stairs with him to get to the cafeteria in the lodge.  

Little J wanted pizza and sat at the table outside happily devouring the pizza slice that was bigger than his face, haha.  My hubby had taken the older J's for a few runs on Lakeview, and joined us for lunch a bit later, along with the E's.  After lunch, we skied some more.  We ended up skiing until 4:00pm, even little J!  

We rented a 3BR condo to share with the E's.  It was only 1 minute away from Diamond Peak, modern and nicely furnished/kept with a beautiful view of Lake Tahoe.  Unfortunately, it's on the side of a mountain, and we had to walk 6 flights of stairs to get from the carport to the condo's front door.  The condo itself had 4 levels, so more stairs inside.  Hauling all our stuff and little J up and down those stairs was a lot more tiring than skiing the whole day, haha.  The E family had stopped by Raley's to buy a ton of food for dinner, and the J's and E's were happily playing in the condo.  After dinner, oldest J complained he wasn't feeling well, so we sent him off to bed with some medicine.  Little J was completely wiped out and probably over-tired from a whole day of skiing, because he kept waking up throughout the night.

Sunday

The next morning, oldest J was feeling better and said he could go ski.  Little J, however, ended up sleeping until past 8:00am, so the E family left for Diamond Peak first.  By the time we got out the door and loaded up everything, it was past 9:00am, and even though the condo was only 1 minute away and led straight to the Diamond Peak parking lot, the parking was all full, and we had to drive all the way down to the Hyatt area to park and wait for the shuttle.  After waiting in a long line, a shuttle bus came, but it quickly filled up before us, and a second shuttle bus had come while the first was filling up.  Unfortunately, people behind us in line cut in to board the second shuttle before we made it over to the second shuttle, and we ended up not being able to board the second shuttle either. After another long wait a third shuttle came which we finally boarded, and we finally arrived at Diamond Peak a bit before 11:00am.  Took almost 2 hours to get to the ski resort that's only 1 minute away from our condo :/  

Little J was tired today, and after only 1 run on Schoolhouse, complained that he's hungry and tired, and I had to haul him up the slope again to get to the lodge.  The rest of the J's and E's joined us a bit later for lunch.  Oldest J had somehow lost one of his gloves, so my hubby had to go around with him looking for his glove, which they finally found.  Unfortunately, the glove was ripped, so I had to give oldest J my gloves and borrow hubby's extra pair of gloves.  After lunch we hit the slopes again.  Little J had refueled and was ready to ski again, and middle J was too tired for the steeper runs, so off I went with the two J's to Schoolhouse run.  Middle J took off ahead of us on the run.  By now, little J was able to do a pizza wedge to slow down, and even turn a bit on his own.  He skied down with both arms gleefully up in the air.  He was tired, though.   As soon as we got to the long lines for the chair lift, he started fussing and crying that he's too tired, flopping over and refusing to stand up.  I had to take off his blue ski tip connector so that I could carry him with his skis on, the entire time that we were in the line.  As soon as we got on the chair lift, he told me, "Put blue thing on ski".  I was like, "Whaaat??  Aren't you tired?  You want to ski some more??"  He replied, "Yeeeees".  So down we went for another run, and it started snowing.  We met up with middle J on the way down, and he told me he lost his goggles, sigh.... Spent another run trying to find his goggles, to no avail.  

It was starting to snow more heavily, and hubby called saying he and oldest J were on the shuttle bus heading to get our car.  So, I proceeded to trudge up that slope to head back to the lodge, except now instead of only one flopping J, I had two.  Middle J kept sliding backwards trying to get up the slope and falling down.  When he tried to get back up, he'd slide down again and fall and was wailing for me to help him.  I put little J down and told him to stay put, skied back down to middle J, helped him get up, then mustered back up to little J to carry him a little further up, only to hear middle J fall and wail again... repeated this several times.  I finally took middle J's skis off and told him to walk up the slope with his skis, which he proceeded to do for a few feet, and then he complained he couldn't carry his skis.  So I took my skis off, carried little J up to the lodge area, deposited him there, went back to middle J, grabbed his skis and my skis and trudged back to little J with middle J walking behind me.  Took half an hour of struggling to get up that slope back to the lodge, just in time for hubby to come pick us up around 2:30pm.  By that time it was snowing steadily, and my entire body and elbows were aching and hurting from carrying and lifting little J :P

The E family left Diamond Peak resort and drove directly home.  We were planning to stay Sunday night and drive back Monday morning.  We relaxed a bit at the condo, and around dinner time hubby was watching the weather forecast.  A huge storm was supposed to start coming in during Sunday night after midnight, with prediction of heavy snow and strong winds through Tuesday.  We decided not to take the chance of getting stuck on Hwy 80 Monday morning.  After dinner we started packing up and left the condo at 9:00pm.  There was a lot of snow already on Hwy 80 with chain control in effect, but we didn't need chains, and there was very little traffic at that hour.  It was still tough driving though with the snow, wind, low visibility, and later heavy pounding rain.  We couldn't see the lane markings at all due to a blanket of white on the road, but luckily there were hardly any cars so we pretty much had the road to ourselves.  My hubby made a good call in deciding to take the SUV.  It could handle the snowy and icy road conditions much better than the minivan.  All the way back we were buffetted by heavy rain and windy gusts.  We made it back home safely by 1:30am, though.   The next morning we checked the traffic cams and saw a ton of snow on the roads with lots of traffic just inching along on Hwy 80.  Good thing we decided to go home Sunday instead!

Pictures & Videos

Check out the pictures and video of little J skiing.