Skiing at Sierra-at-Tahoe

2018-01-27

During the week it snowed 3 days and brought 2 feet of snow to Sierra, so we decided to go ski on the weekend. The E's family along with MD and PM were also planning to join us skiing on Sunday. We booked another 2BR/2BA townhome at Aston Lakeland Village to share with the E's family for Saturday night.

Saturday

We finished packing and loading everything into the car on Friday night around midnight, lay down for 4 hours of shuteye, and got up at 4:15am. We roused all the boys out of bed, dressed them in their ski clothes, dumped them in the car, and were ready to leave by 4:30am.  There was absolutely no traffic, and this time we didn't have to make any stops on the way up.  We arrived at Sierra at an unprecedented early time of 7:45am, and parked in the 3rd parking spot from the ski lodge :P

It still took us half an hour to get all the stuff out of the car, walk to Solstice Eatery to grab a table, and gear up all the boys plus ourselves.  We were in the Easy Rider lift line by 8:45am, but the lifts don't open until 9:00am.  We had to stand waiting in line for over 15 minutes, while Little J kept asking, "Can we go now? Now Mama? Can we go now? Whyyyyyy?..... "  We decided that next time we'd leave at 5:00am instead, haha.

The lift line finally opened, and off we went to Broadway run. Snow was great, soft and fluffy. Weather was gorgeous, sunny and warm. Lots of people got the same idea we did of hitting the slopes after the week of snowing, so unfortunately, the lines were extremely long. Little J hadn't napped much on Friday, and he was tired and fussy. When we skied back to the long line, he flopped around whining and wanting me to hold him. So, I ended up holding him with his skis on through the entire line, putting him down only when we got closer to the chair lift. After only a few runs, he complained he's hungry and wanted to go back to the table. I was a bit relieved that I wouldn't have to hold him in that long line again, haha. I let him eat some fruit and snacks that I packed, then finally bought lunch. Middle J soon skied in as well, though Hubby and Oldest J went to ski another round. So I took Little J and Middle J inside to buy lunch.  Little J wanted pizza, and Middle J wanted chicken tenders.  When I was at the cash register paying for the lunch, Little J told me, "Mama, you forgot to get a knife to cut my pizza."  And he went off to go get a plastic knife for me, LOL. He had to make sure I cut up the pizza into small slices for him to eat.  When we sat down at the table outside, Middle J told me he forgot to get ketchup for his fries. I told him to go get some ketchup then. He said he didn't know where the ketchup is. I told him to go inside and look around, and if he can't find it, go ask the cashier. Little J piped up enthusiastically, "I'll show you where the ketchup is!" And sure enough, he led Middle J inside and over to the stand where the ketchup was, LOL. After they finished eating, I told Middle J to clean up and throw away his trash. He told me he didn't know where the trash can is. Little J immediately pointed behind him and said, "Over there." Well, looks like I don't have to worry about Little J at all, only the older J's!  Hubby and Oldest J joined us soon after to eat lunch as well. 

After lunch, Little J was still too tired to ski and wanted Mama to take care of him, but I wanted to spend some time with the older boys, too.  Hubby finally distracted Little J with puzzle games on his smartphone so that I could go ski with the older J's.  The older J's didn't have energy to ski West Bowl, so we did a couple runs of Sugar-n-Spice to Hemlock, Corkscrew, and Broadway. After that, they said they were done for the day as well, and we skied back to the table.

Hubby went off on his own to get a couple more runs in while the boys played snow, and I started packing up stuff. When Hubby came back, we all walked to the car. We had purchased a handy Bowtie Ski and Pole Carrier for each of us, so all the boys slung the strap diagonally across their bodies to carry their skis and poles by themselves. Even Little J carried his own skis, up the long flight of stairs and all the way to the car.  When we got to the top of the stairs, Little J said, "Mama I carried my own skis! I'm strong!" Hahaha. We left around 3:00pm and headed to Aston Lakeland Village.

As soon as we got all our stuff into the townhome, we showered the boys, and I put Little J to sleep.  The rest of us spent a nice relaxing lounge on the sofa watching TV. When Little J finally woke up close to 7:00pm, we decided to go out to eat dinner.  The boys wanted to eat sushi, so we started driving over to Off the Hook restaurant on Tahoe Blvd. Partway there, Hubby complained, asking why we wanted to go eat sushi two days in a row since the next day on the drive back to San Jose we're going to stop in Placerville to eat sushi anyway at Amerikan Ichi.  Hmm, I told him if he didn't want to eat sushi, then why bother asking the boys what they wanted to eat? He should have just decided on what he wanted instead then. He wanted to eat burgers, but not just mediocre cheapy burgers. He wanted good quality burgers, so I searched Yelp and found a place called California Burger Company near Heavenly Village back the other way on Tahoe Blvd. There was no nearby parking, so we had to park across the street in the parking lot for the grocery store and walk there. When we got there, we saw a long line waiting to check in. It was 1.5 hours wait for an indoor table, or 45 minutes wait for an outdoor table. By then, everyone was of course very hungry, and nobody wanted to wait 45 minutes just to get a table plus another who-knows-how-many minutes to actually get food. So Hubby walked over to the next restaurant, which was a Mexican restaurant. Middle J doesn't eat cheese, and none of us liked to eat beans, and it would have been another 20-minute wait for a table.  Soooo, we ended up walking back to the plaza where we had parked, and passed by a fast food place called Baja Fresh.  It was also Mexican food, but it was quick, and they had non-cheese and non-bean options.  We finally ordered tacos, quesadilla, super nachos, and cilantro lime shrimp rice bowl. The food was not bad for fast food, especially the nachos.  Hubby ended up still being hungry, though, and after the boys were done eating, we walked next door so that Hubby could buy a Subway sandwich to take back to the townhome to eat.  Hmmmm.. I think I would have preferred eating sushi twice, but ah well :P

The E's family arrived around 10:00pm, and of course it was immediate chaos with all the kids running around up and down the stairs playing non-stop.  E's Daddy had purchased a ton of roast duck, soy sauce chicken, and french bread to eat.  He couldn't stand the "hot dog" food at Sierra, haha.  It wasn't until past 11:00pm that we finally got all the kids brushed up, changed, and in bed. Hubby didn't even remember to eat his Subway sandwich, but he was too tired by then to eat.

Sunday

Sunday morning, I woke up at 6:45am to start packing up stuff, but Little J woke up at 7:00am still groggy and wanted me to hold him walking around.  I couldn't put him down until 20 minutes later. To save time, we had the kids eat the roast duck, chicken, and bread for breakfast while we packed up the car. However, both Middle J and Little J didn't like the food much and hardly ate anything, so we ended up going to the main lodge at the resort to eat the free breakfast there. Bagels, cereals, juices, yogurt, donuts, and eggs were all much more to their (and our) liking, hah.  The E's were still not ready to go, so we went ahead first.

We finally left the lodging around 8:40am. When we got to Sierra, there was a long line of cars already.  Hubby had to drop us and our gear off at the loading zone and then find a parking spot far away.  Again, took half an hour to get all the boys to the restroom, geared up, and finally ready to go when Hubby came back.  The E's family arrived, followed pretty soon by MD and PM.

Little E wanted to join me and Little J on Broadway, so we all went together.  MD had skied a lot the day before and was too pooped to ski today, so she watched us ski down Broadway and hung out at the table outside.  After a couple runs on Broadway, E's Mama took Little E over to Sugar-n-Spice. Little J turned to me and said he didn't want to ski Broadway. I asked him if he was tired? And he said no.  I asked him if he wanted to ski some more? And he said yes. He wanted to ski Sugar-n-Spice and Corkscrew, hahaha.  I told him OK, are you sure? Because I'm not gonna carry him and ski. He has to ski on his own. He agreed, and off we went to Grand View Express lift where I took him all the way to the top of Sugar-n-Spice.  The chair lift was a quad, fitting four people. Little J and I sat on the right, and we needed to go left after getting off the lift. Evidently the two guys sitting on the left had to go right. Little J got off the chair lift and turned left, cutting right in front of the guy on the left and causing the guy to fall.. oops :P  Guess have to tell Little J to go straight longer before turning left next time.  Little J stopped at the top of Sugar-n-Spice and wanted me to hold his hand to go down, because the initial "drop" was a little bit steep. I held his hand going down diagonally, and then let go of him when it flattened out, and he skied just fine on his own.  We got to a steeper section marked with a SLOW sign, and he again asked me to hold his hand.  This part was tough cuz it was steeper and his arm is short, so when holding him, it's difficult to do a wide pizza to slow down and harder to turn and zig zag with him  to slow down. I told Little J, "OK, hang on tight and stay upright on your skis. We're gonna be going pretty fast so just try your best to do pizza to help Mama out."  Off we went zooming down at a pretty fast speed.  Little J was going "Wooooooo!! Weeeeeeeee!!"  When we reached the bottom of the steep section, I let him go, and he told me, "Mama that was fun!!"  Ha ha ha. He skied on his own until we got to another steeper section, and we did the same thing, with the same "Wooooooo!! Weeeeeeee!!"  He skied down himself on Upper Main and the narrow curvy Corkscrew section just fine, then I had to hold his hand one last time at the bottom of Corkscrew.  After going down Broadway, he still wanted to ski, so we went one more time on Broadway.  After that he was tired and skied back to the table.

We met up with MD at the table, and let Little J eat some nuts and drink some Aloe Vera juice that we'd packed. Everyone else started trickling in, and we bought lunch to eat. Hubby had gone with Middle J to Upper Powderhorn, which is a pretty steep blue trail. I remember when I first went on that run more than a decade ago, my heart was pounding staring down the steep slope from the top. At the time, E's Daddy took one look at it, shook his head and turned around, LOL.  Hubby said Middle J skied down just fine, not even falling once or taking any breaks!  Geesh. Kids learn fast and have no fear.  Hubby finished eating early, and I told him to get some runs in on his own while the kids are still eating. He went off to do another round of Upper Powderhorn and came down on Bashful and Lower Bashful. Unfortunately, he was going quite fast on Bashful, and he didn't quite see some big "bumps". He ended up flying in the air, and by the time he realized he had flown up in the air he was already crash landing and skidding across the snow :/  Luckily he only bruised up his butt, hips, and back, and didn't sustain any serious injuries!

After the kids finished lunch, they wanted to take a short break from skiing and went to play snow for a bit. Hubby had come back by then to watch them, and I snuck off to get some runs in on my own.  I debated whether I should also do a run on Upper Powderhorn. Otherwise, I get stuck doing easy greens with Little J all the time and have no chance to practice my skiing on the blues, and pretty soon I won't be able to keep up with the Older J's. I decided to work up my courage on Lower Main first. Man, I skied down without falling, but it sure wasn't pretty. I then went up again and skied over to West Bowl to try Upper Powderhorn. Welp, a decade later, and standing at the top of Upper Powderhorn my heart was still pounding looking down that steep slope, hahaha. I stood there for a few minutes gathering up my courage to go down. It was pretty slow going on the upper part of Upper Powderhorn, and by the time I got through that steep section my legs were tired. After that, I just flew straight down. Boy, I gathered a ton of speed flying down Bashful, and luckily I knew that there were gonna be bumps there courtesy of Hubby, so I was prepared when I launched up into the air and gritted my teeth to land back down on my skis without falling. Whew!  That was some ride.. felt like I was going 40mph! After that run, I got a text from Hubby saying that Little J was crying and wanting Mama. 

I decided to head back to Solstice Eatery to check on Little J.  When I got back to the table, I saw MD holding Little J sleeping. 

Evidently, Hubby had given Little J his phone to play games, and then went to go ski some more with Middle J while MD watched Little J.  After playing a while, the screen lock kicked in, and MD didn't know the password, so Little J cried and fussed, and MD ended up holding him to sleep. PM came back to the table shortly after. He had been snowboarding with Oldest J and Oldest E. He was done for the day, but Oldest J and E were still out skiing. MD assured me she and Little J were fine, and shooed me off to go ski some more. No arm twisting needed, haha! I decided to just stick to Broadway in case Little J woke up. Instead of going down the normal side on Broadway, I went down the right side where there's a small ramp to practice more air time :D  After several runs, Hubby and Middle J came skiing down Broadway. They wanted to do one more run on Sugar-n-Spice. I decided to go join them for one more final run, since it was getting late. We skied down Sugar-n-Spice and Hemlock. Man, Middle J was skiing down really fast!  He was squatting down low with his poles tucked up by his sides, racer-style,  haha.  I had to go straight down just to keep up with him! 

By the time we got back to the table, Little J was up. We started packing up while everyone else started skiing back in. MD and PM left first. We soon followed. There wasn't as much traffic as the previous weekend going back. It was still too early for dinner by the time we got to Placerville, so we decided not to stop for dinner until we got to Sacramento area. Hmm...so, we could have eaten sushi the night before, hahahaha. We texted PK and DK for restaurant recommendations, and decided to eat at Pho Xe Lua. We ordered spring rolls, pho beef noodle soup, and fried rice.  All the food was fresh and tasty. The pho soup broth was very good, with a light and well-balanced flavor.  After dinner we drove the rest of the way home without incident :)

Pictures & Videos

Following are pictures and videos of our ski trip.

Picture Album