2008.01.27
Snowboarding at Night
There are many times in my years of snowboarding that I’ve travelled back to San Francisco along 80 at night and seen people skiing and snowboarding down an artificially lit slope. I never found out what resort it was nor really thought about trying it myself. Until yesterday.
The resort is Boreal and, sure enough, they are open (at least right now) from 9AM - 9PM. This is brilliant if you are, like me, a late riser and don’t want to wake up at the crack of dawn so you can make the drive up for a day trip and yet still want to board for longer than a couple hours. Banana Boy and I arrived close to noon (maybe a bit after) and snowboarded until almost 7PM! After six hours with only a short break we were pretty much done. We really lucked out with the weather, too. For the last several weeks CA has been deluged with rain. Yesterday there was no rain all day until the last bit of the drive home. So we had fresh powder, clear weather, and a long day. My leg muscles hate me today!
Going down the slopes at night is a little strange at first, but a lot of fun. The only real issue was straying into the truly dark areas. Honestly, though, it was probably a good thing. When I couldn’t see what the exact terrain is in front of me was, I bent my legs more than normal to compensate (shock absorption) and my performance was actually better than in full daylight.
Boreal’s runs are a bit short for my tastes but they have some good ones. Lift tickets are some of the least expensive I’ve seen for a good sized Tahoe resort and the lines for the lifts were ridiculously fast yesterday. It’s very possible that Boreal might replace my usually day trip location, Sugar Bowl, or at least be a very solid alternative. For folks with kids they even have several short green runs and a sledding/tubing park! My recommendation? Boreal: highly recommended for day trips.
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