April 13, 2016 Boreal, CA

It was a windy day in the CA sun, and we had a chance to ski the area.  With our MAX Passes we can ski here 5 days.  It is near the Donner Pass area. With 500 vertical foot runs it was a different place. This week they opened at 10am, and the ski surface was prime. The area has 6 parks and half-pipes and has a great snowboard teaching staff.  Woodward Tahoe is big and has programs here in winter and summer. The area has a fenced base area which reminded us of Cypress outside of Vancouver, BC.  A staff person checks your lift ticket and then you don't need to show it again. They have an express quad and on the weekend they open 3 more lifts.  The express gives you access to all of their terrain. 90 percent of the folks are in snowboard/ski classes or are riding in the parks. The rest of the terrain was basically ours. We just rode the quad and followed the sun on the groomed trails.  After 2 hours the trails were slushy, and it was time to move on.  It was fun to watch the snowboarders and skiers in the parks and pipes.

I learned to ski there as I grew up in Sacramento and the school districts there ran loads of buses up every weekend. I remember getting dragged up t-bars and j-bars and rope tows. Seemed like every weekend there was another kid going back on the bus with a busted leg. When I started driving we loved it for night skiing. Reminds me of the Summit.