It was another America’s Adventure Place weekend for Adventure Grrl. We kicked off the weekend with dinner at the Circus Circus in downtown Reno, where we ate some delicious Hawaiian food.

We were then treated to the circus act of J.R. Johns and his ‘clever canines’. I like to call him the dog man. He does all kinds of tricks with numerous dogs, from a Great Dane to a Jack Russel Terrier and a black lab. The dogs do hand stands, back flips, magic tricks — you name it! Even though it’s a show for kids, all of the adults in the audience were enamored with the dogs. It’s hard not to be, I mean look at this:

After dinner, we headed to Brew Brothers in the Eldorado, where we danced to an incredible band from Arizona called Tate. They were playing all of today’s alternative hits, and I sang along to every song!

We crashed in our mini-suite at the Circus, and on Saturday, we headed to Mt. Rose Ski Tahoe for another day on the slopes. The hubby made it down a gnarly bumps run, and then as he skied onto a catwalk at the bottom of that run, he did an impressive fall. It was hilarious!

The trees were all flocked with snow on Saturday, making for some very scenic views.

After skiing, we re-fueled on Thai food at the Thai Royal House (pumpkin curry is to die for!), and then we headed to the Reno Hilton for a dance party featuring the disco cover band Bootie Quake out of L.A. We pulled out our best disco moves, and danced until our poor legs just couldn’t take anymore.

On Sunday, we slept in to recover from the night before, and then headed to Prison Hill Recreation Area just outside of Carson City for a bit of hiking. When you reach the summit of Prison Hill, there is an incredible view of Carson City and the Sierras. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera that day, so you’ll have to take my word for it. Beautiful!

Stay tuned for stories from next weekend, when I’ll be skiing three days in a row… Can my legs take it?!

This past weekend, the hubby and I decided to pay hommage to American presidents by searching out some fresh powder on the ski slopes.

We went to Squaw Valley USA on Sunday, and there was about a foot of fresh, yet heavy powder there to greet us.

Hubby is a great powder skier.

I am not.

Hence, it was with some trepidation that I followed him into the trees on our second run of the day. “Let’s go this way!” he enthusiastically proclaimed, and then he was off.

I tried to follow, and next thing I knew, I was lost, in way over my head (literally and figuratively), and having one heck of a time picking my way through the trees in the deep powder.

After what seemed like forever, I emerged from the trees completely away from the downhill ski area, and onto a cross country ski trail. Of course, hubby was long gone.

Lesson #1: Don’t venture into the trees on a powder day if you aren’t good at powder and don’t have a clue as to where you are going.

I could see a chair lift off in the distance, so off I went on the cross country trail in pursuit of that lift.

You should have seen the looks I was getting from the real cross country skiers as they passed me. I was definately out of my element.

From that trail, though, I got a view of three dog sledding teams taking off on a run. The dogs were so excited — barking and trying to run as fast as they could. It looked like a blast… Definitely on my list of things to try in the Reno-Tahoe area. Unfortunately, the dogs were moving so fast I didn’t get to snap a picture of them.

I then ran across a sleigh ride, and decided to snap a picture of them to document my scenic foray away from the downhill slopes of Squaw.

Mental note: I should make hubby take me on a sleigh ride to make up for getting me into this mess…

I then came across a sledding hill, where a bunch of kids were having a blast. It was about this time that I started muttering explicatives under my breath in reference to how the hubby led me into the trees and left me there to fend for myself.

About 20 minutes after popping out on the cross country trail, I managed to get back to a chairlift. By this point, I knew I was on my own for a while, as the hubby was probably still enjoying tree skiing, so I headed to my favorite area of Squaw — KT22.

KT22 was named after an Olympic skier that did 22 kick turns down the face of that hill.

Here is a view from the KT22 chair:

I got to the top of the chair, unloaded, and then turned as I heard the lift attendant yelling, “What are you doing?!”

I saw that a snowboarder had not unloaded, and was sitting on the now stopped chair.

“I ain’t *bleep*ing going down that!” He proclaimed. Evidently, he had gotten scared on the ride up, and intended to ride the chairlift back to the bottom. I guess he missed the 10 or so signs at the bottom of the lift saying, ‘Experts only’, or ‘No easy way down’, or ‘This lift requires advanced skiing skills’. Had to chuckle at that a bit.

Lesson #2: They aren’t kidding when they say that a lift is for experts only.

This is the start of the hill under the chair that scared our poor snowboarder:

Anyway, the rest of the day was much more enjoyable for me, as I went down the wide open faces of KT22, where the snow had been tracked out a bit and I was able to ski a bit more in control.

On Monday, we headed to Kirkwood, where they had about a foot of new snow, and this stuff was light and fluffy. What a world of difference that made — I was actually able to ski through it!

Evidently, light fluffy powder makes the hubby think that he’s being filmed for a Warren Miller flick. I just served as his photographer.

We topped off the day with a nice hot toddy in the bar, and decided that we had to go back to work so that our bodies could recover from two days of powder skiing!

Since October we’ve gone backcountry skiing almost every weekend but we finally decided we take our teles to a resort this weekend. We planned the trip for a while, watching the weather to make sure we had great snow. Mostly we wanted a powder day in the middle of a storm. My husband made me get up at 5am – I told him he was crazy but I decided to do it anyway. So we drug ourselves out of bed and made it to Tahoe City by 7:15am where we had a coffee at the Dam Cafe served by a lady with lots of tatoos who looked like she just had gotten up. Nevertheless the coffee was great and the place was very homey.
We decided to start skiing as soon as the lift would opene at 8am and we pulled into Homewood at 7:45am amazed that we’ve arrived on time. We were even more amazed when we realized that we’ve arrived an hour and fifteen minutes early, having figured that every resort opened at 8am (based on pure conjection).
We got up on the hill with our teles thinking we could probably log more miles of downhill this one day at Homewood than the whole rest of the season backcountry. As soon as we got off the top of the lift onto the grommed runs, we knew that we were out of our element. We only knew how to ski on powder! So of course first thing we did was to head for the treed areas between the runs where we found 1 inch of powder on a breakthrough layer of windpacked powder followed by another 6 inches of old powder and all tracked up amid dense trees. Basically, we couldn’t even turn our skies. So when we finally realized that, we decided we’d get used to the runs. And we had a killer day!!! My husband said he had a breakthrough with this tele turns; however, the closest thing I had to a breakthrough was when my husband hit me on the chin with the grip of his pole as we were getting on the chair, sending my head into the middle crossmember on top of the chair, and almost caused my brains to break through my cranium!
Homewood was very enjoyable with a variety of trails and lake views from almost every place in the mountain. Although we didn’t find the powder we had hope for we did find the snow storm which blew in around 2pm. All and all it was a great day!

Everyone said the snow in the mountains wasn’t worth going skiing, but up around the galena wash area just past Mt Rose ski resort we found just what we were hoping for–about 3 inches of sierra powder. Especially on the north faces where there was still some snow left from previous storms that hadn’t crusted over. We didn’t even start skiing until 2:30pm, but it didn’t matter. We skinned up and made our way to the peak we were shooting for. When we got there, we drank some mate (tea from Argentina), and then we had a spectacular run on the way back. We were back to the car at sunset. A tourist that was up there with her husband and kids asked us if we did that all the time–like, “do you just grab your skis and go skiing anytime?” “Why yes,” I said, “Would you like any Grey Poupon with that?”

I guess I sometimes take for granted what a wonderful place we live in.

Adventure Grrl is back, and man, did I have a true America’s Adventure Place weekend.

It all started on Saturday, when the hubby and I ventured back up to Mt. Rose Ski Tahoe. It had snowed a few inches on Friday, so we were treated to what the hubby was calling ‘dust on crust’ conditions.

We went back to ski the Chutes, and honestly, I think I was getting a big ego because I had skied them so much last weekend.

But just when you start getting over confident, the Chutes will serve to knock your confidence right back down a notch.

That knock was a double diamond trail known as Detonatator. (See the trail map here.) I skied in there thinking I was tough stuff, and next thing I knew, I was on a really steep pitch, looking at about a 6 foot wide path between a rock and a tree.

Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place.

I won’t claim that I got down Detonator with any style or grace at all… I had to take the wimp’s way out to get around that hairy part, but all in all, it was still a great time.

After skiing, we went to see the Sled Fest 2005 freestyle snowmobile competition, where guys were doing back flips on their snowmobiles.

Back flips! How insane is that?!

Anyway, we left Mt. Rose and headed into Downtown Reno for a night on the town. We had a lovely early Valentine’s Day dinner at Roxy’s. Mmmm….. Mushroom raviolis, lobster, and a bottle of wine later, we were ready for the magic show of Darren Romeo, presented by Siegfried & Roy. Darren Romeo is called “The Voice of Magic” because he sings his way through the magic show, and he has an incredible voice. Not hard on the eyes, either!

Here we are at Roxy’s… Notice the dog chef painting that observed our meal:

On Sunday, the hubby and I headed for Alpine Meadows. A storm happened to blow its way in, and at times, it felt like we were on an expedition to Mt. Everest instead of skiing… But, with the right clothes and a hunger for fresh tracks, skiing in a storm can be quite enjoyable.

Here is the chairlift, which looks like it was taking us up into the clouds:

Another view from the lift. Brrrrrr!!!!!

After skiing, we treated ourselves to a Couples Massage at the Cal Neva Resort Health Spa in North Shore. The massage room was overlooking the lake, so we enjoyed the sunset, and then some true pampering. We then hit the hot tub, and practically collapsed into our beds at the Cal Neva. Here are some pics:

Here’s me being a dork and taking my picture in the mirror of our room:

Here is the view from our room:

The thing I love about the Cal Neva Resort (besides the incredible views) is its rich history. The resort was owned by Frank Sinatra, and was frequented by the Rat Pack and the likes of Marilyn Monroe. The resort has an old Tahoe feel, making me feel like a Hollywood A lister back in the 50s.

OK, maybe not an A lister, but you get my drift.

Welcome to the What Did You Do Last Weekend blog. We have numerous people that will be participating, talking about all of their adventures in Reno-Tahoe, America’s Adventure Place.

I’m Adventure Grrl. This is me:

I’ll be the moderator of this blog, and will kick things off with telling you about what I did last weekend.

I have a new addiction: The Chutes at Mt. Rose Ski Tahoe.

The Chutes are some super steep terrain that Mt. Rose just opened to the public last month. Prior to that, it was illegal to ski the Chutes, but I know of people who would hike in and ski them after the ski area had closed for the season.

But now, you can ski them, and keep going back for more. Which is eactly what I did on Saturday.

The Chutes to me are all a big mind game. It’s all about getting past your fears and just skiing. I won’t claim that I skied them with grace, but I skied them, which is a feat in itself.

The top of the Chutes are extremely steep. As you ski down them, if there is someone coming up behind you, they are knocking snow down on you, causing a mini avalanche. (Mini, I said, just little sprinkles of snow, because they do avalanche controls in the Cutes).

You really don’t want to fall on the top half of the runs on the Chutes, because you’d most likely slide for quite a ways. You have to really push that thought and mental image out of your mind while you’re on them.

For a split second, though, that thought did cross my mind, and I was thinking, You really don’t want to fall here, and I fell.

As I was tipping over, a small whimper of panic escaped from my lips. Luckily, I managed to just sit down and didn’t slide at all. It was a close call, though.

Another time, I stopped to take this picture of the Chutes while I was in the middle of the hill.

It’s hard to tell from that picture exactly how steep the terrain is, but believe me — it’s steep. It didn’t really hit me how precarious of a position I was in while I was taking until I was in the middle of taking the picture… It’s hard to balance on a steep slope in skis, while you’re focusing a camera and trying not to drop anything.

You couldn’t get me to stop doing the Chutes while I was there on Saturday. It was such a feeling of conquering that I just wanted to keep going back for more. And then, when you’re standing at the top with your skis poking over the edge, the adrenaline rush is quite the high.

Like this:

You can see a trail map here. I’ve now skied Nightmare, Hornet’s Nest, Yellow Jacket, El Cap, Jackpot and Exhibition.

Here is a view looking down on the Chutes:

Before skiing the Chutes, the hubby and I went to ski WildCard, which is the a run that you have to hike to reach. WildCard used to be known as Unemployment Bowl, as any Mt. Rose employee caught skiing there in the past would be fired. But now, it’s open to the public! It’s more of just a trees run on a really gentle slope (in sharp contrast to the Chutes). Here is the view from the top of WildCard:

It was the first run of the day, and my first turn into WildCard, I tried to take a narrow path between some trees, and managed to hit a branch with my arm, knocking me over.

Man, did that hurt. I have a nice bruise to prove it, too. The hubby was laughing at me, saying, ‘That didn’t take long.’ I think it’s a good thing that we both have helmets this year!!!

As for the rest of the weekend, on Saturday night, we went to see Larry The Cable Guy at the brand spanking new Reno Events Center (REC). Wow, what a building! It was the first event ever at the REC. The event was sold out, and there was great energy in the crowd. It’s so awesome to have such an incredible events/concert facility smack in the middle of Downtown Reno.

Well, stay tuned for my next week’s post. And if you want to participate in this blog, drop me a line!