Reno-Tahoe

Powder-lovers, get your bags packed!

Southwest Airlines is blowing out ski season travel deals to Reno-Tahoe International Airport with its “Friends Fly Free” promotion by extending the offer with one free night hotel booking along with one free ski day, with a flight+hotel+ski booking.

The offer applies to travel booked between Oct. 30 and Nov. 26 (before 6 p.m.) for travel between Nov. 4 and Feb. 10 (blackout dates apply).

The deal

• Every second person flies FREE when you book a flight + hotel package.
• Receive every 3rd night FREE.
• Buy a 3-day lift ticket and receive 1 of those days FREE.

Reno Tahoe hotels involved in the promotion include: Eldorado Hotel Casino, Silver Legacy Resort Casino, Peppermill Reno, Atlantis Casino Resort Spa, Circus Circus, John Ascuaga’s Nugget, Grand Sierra Resort, and the Sands Regency.

Ski Resorts involved in the promotion include: Squaw Valley USA, Northstar at Tahoe Resort, Sierra at Tahoe, and Heavenly Lake Tahoe.

For more information on sking and snowboarding in Reno Tahoe, visit our resort guide online.

Mt. Rose Ski Tahoe offers affordable multi-session lessons available to all local children for the 09/10 season. Ski and snowboard development programs are designed for elementary age children in a controlled learning environment with safety as Mt. Rose’s highest priority.

Mt. Rose Youth Programs have a tremendous success rate with the key element being continuity. The students learn from the same instructor throughout the lesson block, enabling them to build a positive and trustworthy relationship. Class sizes are small, allowing for individualized instruction and rapid progression of skill development. Year to year many students return to further their abilities; in fact, many graduates of past school programs are now part of our qualified instructor team.

The Winter Program starts Jan. 5 and the Spring Program starts Feb. 23. Youth programs are held one day per week for five weeks, available Tuesdays through Fridays. Each five-week session is offered both in the morning or afternoon and is great for kindergarteners or students at multi-track schools that are off during January, February or March.

The Rosebuds Youth Program is available to ages 4-8 (snowboarders ages 7-8) and costs $200, includes rental equipment. The Rippers Youth Program is available to ages 9-12 and costs $115 ($160 with rental equipment). Register for Youth Programs online at www.skirose.com.

Mt. Rose Ski Tahoe will be opening Halloween weekend with the Flying Jenny lift in operation accessing the Show-Off run. Show-Off will have park features set up and will be open Friday-Sunday from 10 a.m.-4 p.m.

Reduced rate tickets make this a great excuse to get those cobwebs of your skis and boards, with $20 tickets for skiers 13 and over, $10 tickets skiers ages 6-12, while and 5 and under ski free.

On Saturday, Oct. 31 get a $5 discount on a lift ticket if you show up in costume!

• Run: Show- Off
• Base: 8-12” produced through snowmaking in the past 3 days
• Lift: Flying Jenny Conveyor
• Park: Selected Terrain Park Features (rails & boxes)

The Mt. Rose main lodge will be open with Timbers Bar offering food and drinks.

Ski School and Rental Shop services will not be available.

Season leases may be picked up on the lower level.

Mt. Rose is Tahoe’s Gateway Resort, located 25 minutes away from Reno and 15 minutes from Lake Tahoe. Mt. Rose boasts over 1,200 acres of terrain and convenient parking. Mt. Rose will beintroducing the New Slide Lodge this winter – a 7,865-square-foot building offering new dining options and panoramic views of Washoe Valley. For current weather conditions at Mt. Rose- Ski Tahoe, visit www.skirose.com or call (775) 849-0704.

Colder temperatures on Donner Summit have enabled Boreal to crank up its snowmaking machines allowing the resort to reopen Friday, Oct. 30. Boreal is scheduled to offer its traditional early season intermediate trail via the Castle Peak Quad Chairlift, plus jib features for park riders.

Boreal will be open from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. beginning Friday for weekends only (Friday – Sunday) until further notice. Night operations will begin Nov. 27 at 3:30 p.m. More lifts and runs will continue to open as snow and weather conditions permit. Resort services will include all base facilities including food and beverage, ski/snowboard rentals, lessons and retail.

Visit Boreal’s Web site, www.rideboreal.com, or call for ongoing updates on re-opening details.

It’s a right of passage kicking off each ski and board season. BOBOFest09, a screening of the new Warren Miller movie “Dynasty,” will be held at the Reno Events Center on Nov. 20.

More of a party than a movie, the event draws thousands of snowsports enthusiasts and includes a huge snow industry trade show with over 50 vendors, professional skiers and boarders and contests.

Miller’s “Dynasty” has an added bonus for Tahoe skiers – a big segment of the movie features skiing in the Sierra, scenery from our beautiful corner of the world and Tahoe snowsports personalities. The event also benefits Bobo’s kids’ scholarship programs for the Reno Housing Authority and the Sky Tavern Jr. Ski Program.

Check out the clip below to see Tahoe scenes from Dynasty, buy your tickets and come out to Reno’s biggest winter party.

The legendary Squaw Valley USA is celebrating its 60th anniversary – and the 50th anniversary of the 1960 Winter Olympic Games – all season long, starting by rolling out great events and a couple of the resort’s world-renowned athletes.

Celebrate Squaw ‘s 60th opening day on Nov. 21 with an outdoor screening of the anniversary movie on the KT-22 Sundeck and live music at Olympic House, when hundreds of balloons drop from the Funitel and Squaw Valley pro skier and BASE jumper, JT Holmes BASE jumps out of the cable car. Event calendar:

• 1 p.m.: Ski With Jonny Moseley at the top of the Funitel
• 4 – 4:30 p.m.: Monster Toast, Balloon Drop, Cable Car Base Jump
• 5 p.m.: Screening of Squaw Valley USA – 60 Legendary Years
• 7 p.m.: Live Music at the Olympic House

With the winter games returning to the West Coast for the first time since the 1960 Olympics, Squaw Valley will be the U.S. hub for Olympic activity leading up to the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. Get ready for a fun season at Squaw.

Squaw Valley skier J. T Holmes gets psyched up to perform an urban Ski-BASE jump off the roof of the Silver Legacy hotel casino in downtown Reno, Nev., Saturday Nov. 17, 2007.

The snow is falling at Reno Tahoe’s ski and board resorts, and the powder hounds are getting itchy with anticipation. The region should start seeing some openings in the coming weeks. Here are some tentative dates (conditions permitting):

• Alpine Meadows: Dec. 5
• Mt. Rose Ski Tahoe: TBD
• Squaw Valley USA: Nov. 21
• Northstar-at-Tahoe Resort: Nov. 21
• Diamond Peak: Dec. 10
• Sugar Bowl: TBD
• Heavenly: Nov. 20
• Boreal Mountain: TBD
• Homewood Mountain Resort: TBD

For complete listings of Reno Tahoe resorts, visit us online.

(Photo taken today courtesy Alpine Meadows)

Boreal Mountain Resort, located at Donner Summit, made snow for 50 hours during last week’s cold snap and turned it into a weekend of fun for anxious skiers and snowboarders.
Boreal’s Castle Peak Quad chairlift rolled for three days starting on Friday, posting a record for the resort’s earliest opening ever.

According to the resort, every chair was full from Friday morning until lifts closed Sunday at 4 p.m. With bluebird skies and 60-degree temperatures, opening weekend drew big crowds.
The resort also held the 5th Annual Jibassic Public Invitational event and handed out more than $4,000 in cash prizes and lots of swag from resort sponsors, including: Red Bull, 686, Fuel TV, Southwest Airlines, Moment Skis and Smokin’ Snowboards.

“Installing a $1.2 million snowmaking system last summer made all the difference in breaking our opening record” said Jody Churich, General Manager at Boreal. “Along with our new quad chair, also installed last summer, we were able to put the snow down and handle all the people, so a truly great weekend by all accounts.”

Boreal’s early season operation is tentatively weekends only (Friday-Sunday) until further notice, or as conditions permit.

Photo Courtesy Chris Lange, Boreal Mountain Resort.

Boreal’s snowmaking efforts are about to break yet another record – the resort has decided to move its opening day up to Friday, Oct. 9. The resort will turn on the Castle Peak Quad lift for the earliest season opener in the resort’s history. The first record was set at Boreal on Oct. 11, 2000.

Boreal’s opening will also mark the first and only resort to open in California for the 2009/10 winter season.

Boreal’s lift will operate from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Lift tickets for children ages 5-12 will be $15, while adults ages 13 and up will be $30. College student tickets on Friday with valid student i.d. will be $15. Boreal will offer one groomed trail, and one terrain park featuring six to ten features.

Stay tuned for updates at www.rideboreal.com.

Homewood Mountain Resort is getting green to keep Tahoe blue.

The ski resort, perched high above Lake Tahoe’s West Shore, has completed this summer work on 80,000 square feet of land restoration, thanks to 0ver $700,000 (much of the money matching funds) of California state grants for both the restoration and forest fuels management.

The resort announced today it had reached its milestone goal of restoring a total of  240,000 square feet of decades-old abandoned work roads to a natural state.

Homewood is actively reducing overall land coverage at the resort, with a particular focus on removing old mining and logging roads – known to be one of the largest contributors to sediment in the Tahoe basin. Key to this effort, Homewood is monitoring the sediment reduction that is a direct result of the land restoration work and in combination with modeling, can clearly demonstrate significant reductions in sediment yield after restoration.

Since inception of the land restoration work in 2006, Homewood’s restoration efforts have resulted in a reduction of over 60 metric tons of sediment runoff.  Within restored areas, sediment runoff has been reduced by more than 97 percent, meaning that water is largely being absorbed into the ground as opposed to running off into streams and the lake.

With the land restoration completion date originally set for summer, 2010, Homewood is ahead of schedule.

This fall, an additional five acres of fire prevention efforts are to be completed on particularly steep sloped areas at Homewood.  Due to challenges of thinning forest fuels on steeper slopes, the planned forest fuels management work will further help Homewood with the goal of forest fuels management on all 1,200 acres of the resort by 2012.  To date, over 450 acres (or slightly more than one-third of the mountain) have been treated.