Spring Break - Day 3 (Bunny Slopes)

One of the slopes at Sierra-At-Tahoe

Sunday, March 25, 2012

We started our day by stopping by the hotel continental breakfast at around 10 am, which was basically just pastries and yogurt.  When we walked in, one of the staff members was in the dining area (actually  just the game room where the pastries were) and was in the middle of listing the best nearby ski resorts for beginner skiers.  Since we were wondering the same thing, we listened intently and decided to make Sierra-At-Tahoe Ski Resort our day's destination.  It was only about 25 minutes away, and our resort was able to give us both discount lift tickets and discount rental coupons.  To really pack on the savings we signed up for a two-day lift pass at Sierra, hoping that we wouldn't be so sore from today's activities that we wouldn't want to go back tomorrow.

We stopped at the rental shop across the street from our hotel, and then made the drive to Sierra at Tahoe, arriving a little after noon.  It was nice driving around the mountain for a bit in the daylight so we could see all the sights that we missed in last night's near pitch black drive.

Hanging out on the bunny slopes

Steph had only been skiing once before (almost a year ago), and I always need reminders on how to ski, so we started out using the shortest lift (aptly named Easy Rider Express) and making runs on the basic slope.  We did variations of that several times before breaking for lunch.  In our second session we decided to use a different lift (the only slightly more manly named Rock Garden), which went up a little higher than the one we had used earlier.  The main path from Rock Garden led into the easier slopes we had done earlier in the day, so we did that connecting run a few times.  I mixed in a few steeper, more difficult runs from that lift as well and only had a problem when I accidentally found myself skiing off a jump, became airborne, and was unable to stick the landing.  A little painful, but it wouldn't be a day on the slopes without a few good falls. At 4 pm the lifts stopped running for the day, so we headed out.  We really only used a tiny fraction of the mountain today, but it was a good training day with some great weather, and a whole lot of fun.  We're aiming to get an earlier start tomorrow, and expand to some longer and more difficult runs as the day goes on.
 
When we got back to our hotel, some soreness was already setting in so we decided to hit up the outdoor hot tub.  It was a little bit further of a walk in 35 degree weather than we would have liked, but the tub felt great once we got there.  The hot tub area is right before the edge of the hotel property where it meets Lake Tahoe itself, so there was some really great views of the lake and of the snow capped mountains surrounding it.  Evening was pretty chill with dinner at a hole in the wall Mexican restaurant cleverly named Los Mexicanos.