So, we finally booked our stuff today; F2, Nils & I. The motel was way cheaper than I’d expected; $100 a night or so for the room, which from memory is half what we were paying last time I was at Tahoe… but then, it was NYE at the time then, so… though, it is Superbowl weekend apparently… hopefully that means most people will be glued to their 43-billion-inch flatscreens, and leaving the slopes clear for us to tear around on. :)
Lift tickets are as always expensive, though I think we’ll score them for around $55/day, which is about as cheap as you can really get, short of knowing the girls running the ticket counter. :)
Also, there’s a free shuttle from our motel to the mountain – Northside – which is pretty sweet… I’ll still have to go through the snow cables business to get to lake Tahoe, but, not having to battle retarded rednecks doing donuts – unintentionally – every day will be a big stress reliever.
And I bought snow cables. I can’t have chains, apparently, because my car doesn’t like them… and naturally it only liked the most expensive cables, too… however, “most expensive” is $65, which seems pretty crazy; I’m pretty sure it cost something like $40 just to rent them last time I went to the snow in Oz… huh. I couldn’t even find a place here that rents them; what’s the point when they’re that cheap.
Ski/board hire’s pretty pricey, though… $20-25 is the cheapest I can find… I’m pretty sure that’s what we paid on the mountain last time… hire in South Lake Tahoe was $11 a day, I’m pretty sure… so, I don’t know what the deal is there.
Sadly, my car has no roof rack option from the manufacturer, and the two 3rd party options I’ve thus far considered in detail – Thule and Yakima – are at best $385… eek. Granted that’s with a ski/board widget, not just a basic crossbar setup, but, said widget is only $100 of said price anyway. I’m pretty sure the receipt for ye ol’ Commodore’s roof racks said something like $90… so, given we can’t fit boards – let alone skis – into the boot – we tried – it looks like we’ll be shoving them in the back seat. Hopefully the weather is nice enough that we can clean them first, so I don’t soak the seats… I’m not sure what water logged seats smell like, but I doubt it’s lavender and peach.
So yeah… Northside is a relatively beginner’s mountain… I’d originally thought of trying out Sugar Bowl, but upon review realised it wasn’t really tailored to a first time snowboarder… if I were skiing, it looks like it’d be pretty good.
.. hopefully there’s no big unexpected expenses… thus far it’s looking to be a relatively cheap trip… maybe ~$400 (sans cost of cables). Last time was something like $700, but then, at least $300 of that was just ski clothes. Huh… when you look at it that way, it doesn’t seem so cheap this time around either.. :/
Ah well. Skiing’s too expensive. A season pass to Northstar & Sierra is $440… actually works out to be pretty good value if you go up there, say, four or five times in the season. I doubt I’ll be so industrious this winter, though… maybe next year. (course, scary as it is, next April my visa expires, so who knows where I’ll be after that)
