First of all: Happy New Year to all!  South Lake is definitely the (or a) place to be!  The festivities began at 2p, or 3p or 5p (no one can remember).  Once we made it out of the cabin ~9:30p we split as some superpartiers went off to Mont Blegh and the rest of us rockstars hit up a supremely local pub.  The street by Stateline slowly began filling and filling and by midnight it had tons of people being happy.  Oh, and the police were in riot gear.  Yeah.  It's like that.

Day 1: Heavenly.  Fantastic.  Almost the whole mountain was open and we took great advantage of it.  For being Jan. 1, I was surprised that no one was on the slopes.  But given how in our cabin, only 8 of the 13 people were even able to rally at 8am, extrapolated, I guess that makes sense for the rest of the mountain.  The trails were smooth, the snow was crisp under our rides and in an effort to destroy ourselves, we decided that after lunch, we should (instead of going to the hot tub, like I wanted to do) take it to the top of the mountain and rock a ♦ and ♦ ♦ to finish the day. I will say that the snow was positively beautiful up there, tons of powder left over from the past storm.  Word of the day: heavy.  Applied to: snow, gloves, food, more snow, beer, falling, ect.

Day 2: Heavenly.  This just gets more and more exciting.  The day started off with most of the mountain on wind hold so we hit up the Nevada side which was empty and perfect.  The glades were open and picturesque with many sections that had been untouched and we were able to make virgin tracks in powder.   It was snowing in the late morning which means that all of our runs became way more interesting.  I had a Goggle malfunction that left me coming down the mountain with my eyes closed half the time. All in all, a day that will stand out as one of the better ones....Back at the cabin, the second cohort of folks showed up tonight, so that brings our grand total up to 18 people, in a cabin with beds for 10.  Ah, the good life.

Day 3: Heavenly.  Just spectacular.  Six inches of new snow means that we were riding freshies all morning long.  The far East Nevada side was in perfect conditions with all the glades open and available for riding.  I did manage to get some serious battle scars on my board.  I blame the logs I was jumping off of.  Conditions were so nice that scarfed down our delicious chili bread bowls and hit the mountain back up for a full 7 hour snowboarding day.  Back at the cabin, we've now watched DC Mtn Lab 1.5 and That's It, That's All about 15 times.  Our dinners have been spectacular, and I'm pretty sure someone dumped bath salts into the hottub.  By far, the best news was that I found another ride home which means I'll be staying for Day #4!  Hooray!

Day 4: Heavenly.  Perfect.  I didn't think that yesterday could be eat for this trip, but it was.  The sun was shining the day was clear, all the beginners had decided that the mountain looked better empty so they had left, and the far far east side opened up.  Killebrew Canyon opened for the first time this season with untouched snow and amazing conditions.  We were making great carves and managed to get some action shots.  This was also the first day that only two of us made it to the slopes.  Everyone else was too tired/sore/boring/wanted to go home early, so we took advantage and spent 5 hours riding non-stop.  Definitely the hardest day of riding I've done in a while.  We regrettably had to leave, work and real life and all, but the day ended spectacularly with no traffic and the best Subway sandwich ever.