Everything's Bigger in Tahoe

I skinned up the trail at the front of the pack, shoulder-to-shoulder with Sammy, the group’s guide. Sammy had been born somewhere around LA and had moved to Tahoe 7 or 8 years ago to guide in the backcountry. As I was the only person who showed up stag for the AIARE 1, it was socially acceptable for me to play teacher’s pet. The two of us chatted about California, moving at a conversational pace.

We talked about how big and spread out it was, how I had never seen so many individual homes as when I looked up at the hills on the way into town from SFO the first time I visited. In New York, I swore, there are many more people, but we all live in tidy terrariums, stacked one atop another.

The Wednesday prior, we held an informational Zoom to review the pre-learning and basics of avalanche safety. We covered what AIARE stands for, and that this course is backcountry skiing's unenforceable version of a PADI certification. The key points are how to find and rescue somebody and how to manage group dynamics to avoid bad decisions. Plus, some bits about what constitute bad decisions.

We were told one person skipped our call. A guy stayed off video and on mute the entire time, too. A group of three women, friends from business school at Berkeley Haas, were driving to take the training together at a house but ran late. Sammy wore a puffy jacket and beanie. Her heat was broken.

Saturday morning, we whispered about how Mr. no-video was there with his girlfriend, Ms. in-absentia, and they were lovely, fun additions to the group, albeit split-boarders not skiers. The Haas friends naturally sat one or two degrees of separation away from me, but we didn’t play the name game.

Sunday afternoon, at the top of our objective, we looked down a 28 degree slope near Donner Ridge and decided it was safe. Mr. no-video asked about ski etiquette. In Utah, backcountry skiers nestle their turns tightly, creating figure eights. Utah skiers obsess over farming, preserving powder for the next lap. In California, Sammy said, they don’t have to farm turns. You can ski wherever you want, avalanche and other hazards notwithstanding, because it snows so much. Close to the coast, the warm ocean air carries more moisture up into the mountains, depositing dozens of feet of Sierra Sludge in a heavy maritime snowpack.

The season had been strong into January, and this conversation anticipated the record snowfall the Sierra Nevada would see this year. The week before we showed up, Sammy had skied a line over the Nevada border that she said rarely “came in” or carried enough now to be skiable anymore. She meant this as a warning, though, because it slid the day after her tour there.

On the skin track, I had told her about my first trip to Tahoe, in February 2020. Midwinter, and the bottom of the mountain at Palisades was all slush. The famous cliffs off KT stood stark and huge. Bay Area types in their gaudy retro windbreakers dominated the place, and I walked away unimpressed.

On the way up Sunday, we stopped to dig a snow pit to examine conditions. While digging in the shadow of Donner Ridge, I asked about how Saturday’s tour had been right opposite the Donner Ski Ranch, and they don’t seem too worried about naming things after the Donner party here.

I bolstered my credibility with the group when I shared that, for the first 26 and change years of my life, I thought the Donner Party was the people who went missing on Roanoke Island. I hadn’t known about the cannibalism until one evening over Christmas when a meme about Santa naming a reindeer “Donner” led me to a Wikipedia hole, which in turn led to me lying rigid in bed, eyes peeled open, terrified of the spirits haunting me.

The story was a group of migrants trusted the wrong guy and didn’t make it over the mountains in time. A man named Hastings goaded them toward his new “Hastings Cutoff” route, the type of shortcut that’s longer. Jim Bridger, the famed woodsman, encouraged this because the route passed the trading post he’d built to gouge migrants. Imagine building a gas station before the road. Hastings hoped to become California’s governor and figured he’d win if everybody came to California on a road bearing his name. By this theory, there should be more governors named "Main" or "Interstate."

The guide I went out with in Montana explained how AIARE 1 tends to over-index on leadership and group dynamics, at the expense of “snow science.” The thinking, however, is that recreation enthusiasts are inclined to think that they know more than they know, and then if they’re with a group that doesn't understand human factors, one or two overconfident or self-interested skiers, often men, may bluster everybody into a sticky situation. Balancing each member's ability, motivation, and experience is key to informing a balanced plan.

Without a freak early-season snowstorm, the Donners might have made it alive. But, the sludge fell, and they got stuck on the shores of a small lake now named for them. “I ate my parents, and all I got was this stupid lake,” a novelty t shirt might read. The homes on the lake today are, at a minimum, aspirational.

Early storms, we learned, can create persistent weak layers that cause serious danger. The snow falls, and it sits out a while. Surface hoar, abnormal crystals that bond poorly, may develop on top. Eventually, more snow covers the surface hoar, but it never properly sticks to the early snow beneath. In the right circumstances, this weak interface will stick around for a long time and stretch over a large area. It will persist. The hard-to-detect layer can cause dangerous deep slab avalanches which, worst of all, can be triggered remotely. One individual’s false step near in an area of thin snow cover can trigger the entire slope, and next thing you know it’s the last thing you know.

In my mind, everybody in California just moved there. Yet, Joe DiMaggio was born out there. I struggle to understand this, and I find it remarkable Joan Didion didn't move from like Illinois or Iowa or some shit. The parade of settlers just kept on coming. Texas may be larger by landmass, with El Paso closer to the Pacific than to Texarkana, but these settlers gave California more people, more cars, and more smog.

Texas joined the union by treaty, but California has toll booths prepared along the Nevada border and a secession-ready flag that says “republic” on it. What the California Republic represents is immaterial to me. If I wanted to find out what it meant, I would have asked any of the 45 people I knew in college who had one on their wall or socks.

These people are making California more Texas than Texas. It’s browning and drying, and tumble weeds are moving in. Hetch Hetchy was hardly the only disaster, as Tulare Lake, the second largest lake in the US by surface area, had dried up by 1899.

I didn't understand how the Sierra Sludge could be so wet and heavy in what I considered a dry place. The whole state, Sammy explained as we skinned up, had once been wetlands. The lakes and wetlands held their water, the water evaporated, then the spiny Sierra’s clipped the moisture down from the air into the snow. This state of extremes has the highest and lowest points in the lower 48, so the drought that had run my entire adult life was interrupted only by record-breaking atmospheric rivers.

Bleary eyed, learning the basics of the pre-trip planning checklist Saturday morning, I jotted down my first lesson. In climbing and free diving, we remembered safety steps with mnemonic devices and checklists; skiing is no different. The night before, I had landed in Sacramento at midnight and slipped off to Hertz minutes before close to pick up a Mazda SUV that implied four wheel drive.

In this planning checklist, it’s important to be thorough, but also realistic. Know how long things take, and know what bailout options exist. It’s critical to review these details with a partner.

Going stag, I had no such chance. Not everybody shares my passion for uphill travel, and my main touring partner had taken the course already. I came to Tahoe alone, therefore, because I needed somewhere far enough to get a decent sleep on the red eye and make it to my desk at 0900 Monday.

It emerged that “book accommodation” had not made it onto my checklist. At the first roadside motel in the mountains, I rang the doorbell until the night guy woke up, as I had no cell service. No room at the inn. Another motel said that yes, they had availability, but no, they didn’t let rooms at this hour. The local Marriott was full, even for platinum members.

I landed at a Best Western. These hotels are good enough; I’m no snob. They are not, however, worth $350 per night.

The nightwatchman asked me what my plan was for the weekend. I responded, cagey, not wanting to book two nights at this price, figuring I’d find a new place tomorrow. Because it was technically Saturday, he said, he could offer me extremely late checkout, if that helped. With a wink and a nod, he told me that I had access to the room until about 9:30 PM Saturday evening.

Some quick math ensued. The housekeeping staff did not work at night. The deadbolt can only be done from the inside. If I made it back for curfew, I could squat the extra night. I just had to be sure to keep the door propped open and take all my personal effects with me at once.

These details, sheepishly revealed, did not paint me as the honest, trustworthy companion one would want in the backcountry. A safe planner and careful communicator I was not. Charming enough to score a politely-refused invitation to the Haas crew's ski house, I may have been.

During the debrief, we wrapped our checklist by relitigating the day's choices. A group from a rival guide company had skied through us out of control as we descended. We’re not farming turns, but there still are basic necessities of polite company that overlap with safety. The backcountry, we discussed, sees more and more visitors every year.

The Texification of California means more cars and more people are coming to Tahoe. An influx of remote workers, the white collar ski bums, is driving up home prices. The once-lethal mountains now themselves overflow, and nobody knows their neighbor.

After my terrarium comment, I asked Sammy what she thought about this as a onetime transplant. There seems to be a difference, we agreed, between people who come to guide and participate in the community and those others, but the lines are not sharp. The basic point, like much in the outdoors, involves respect for the place. There may come a time when skiers need to farm turns. Will newcomers will be open to this?

The evening before, at Bar of America on the main Donner Pass Road, I sat next to a gentleman appearing to be a crusty local. He never came in on Saturdays, but he had a hankering for fish n chips, which they make better than anybody else around. We talked wistfully about the town’s growth. It later emerged he was himself from Wisconsin.

Hastings thought only about his quest to be governor, and Bridger his trading post economics. The good of the collective, the health of the Donner party, never crossed their minds. The group that plowed through us thought only about the joy of going fast. Moving with abandon on a day with a complex avalanche problem or higher danger could put random strangers in serious danger.

The Lone Star State’s rugged individualism is at play in California’s private cars and single-family homes. California’s bigness is growing bigger because individual people know that they will personally have enough water, they can find a place to live, and the San Andreas won’t rupture in their backyard. They can ski wherever they want, because enough atmospheric rivers replenish the snow with free refills. Yet, every winter visitor leaves a footprint in the snow.

At the conclusion of our debrief Sunday afternoon, we shared rose/bud/thorn takeaways from the course, The majority of our group was women, unusual for skiing, but likely good for decision making, we agreed. An impending influx of chest thumping, pseudo-expert machismo-oriented decision makers would compromise safety. Depending on the avalanche problem, the Texan attitude could be the Californian’s downfall.

If we can’t depend on careful, collective decision makers outside our group, understanding our surroundings is as important as managing the needs within our group. We all agreed, before parting, to look out for one another and to keep our heads on a swivel.

Saturday night, before I met my Wisconsin friend at the bar, there was no parking. Americans and their cars. Truckee is already overrun. I crept down Donner Pass Road some seven miles per hour. Three quarters of a mile later, I found a place and pulled in. Just then, a beat up white Subaru Outback laid on the horn, gave me the finger, and sped past.