Spring Break Schedule

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Tuesday Evening, March 26, 2024

The Schedule

Wednesday, March 27- Friday, March 29th, watching the weather!

Spring Skiing. We are open so kids have something to do. No buses, no lessons. Any 2024 Sky Tavern pass gets you in for free including High School Racing passes. 1 PM to 4 PM. Check the front page of skytavern.org or your email if the wind is too much to run each day. There are concerns about wind this week. Check before you drive up.

Saturday, March 30th 

The rescheduled Bring a Friend Day. As we were blown out by the wind and snow on Presidents Day, time to give it another try. Bring your friends and family to come ski. No lessons, so we need some help from instructors running the place.

Two buses are running. (a second Red Coat Ceremony for Ski Patrol Candidates this season We are adding more Ski Patrollers to the ranks.)

$60 adult guest tickets

$40 child guest tickets

Easter Sunday, March 31st. Closed.

April 6/7 Week 7. Back to classes!

This is also the weekend our level 1 PSIA/AASI candidates get tested. Nerves will be working overtime but they got this!

April 13/14

Most likely the last weekend of the 2024 season. Game and race days. Fun stuff. Tears to follow.

April 20^th Take the mountain apart and put it away until 2025. Ski Patrol’s task. Most of this is rope lines, tower pads, and other hill safety gear. Stuff we hope we never use.

Just so you know work is just beginning for Sky Tavern Mountain staff, Mike, Richard, the Garretts, Gunny, Lars, Spencer, Jason, Colin, and sure I forgot someone.

April 22^{nd –} 27th. The Sky Ridge lift has to come apart. The first task is to take 22 chairs off and test them for fatigue. If we find a single issue, all 102 chairs must come off the lift and be tested. Repeat for America lift except only start with a dozen chairs. That takes weeks and is done every year. Next, one of the assemblies of wheels on one tower comes off. There are 1000 lbs of stuff up there, no we don’t own a crane. There is a bit of creativity in working on lifts to do it safely. We got this down.

If all goes well and the crew gets all this done by June, then the real work on Sky Ridge starts. All the electronics in the motor room are being replaced, a computer is replacing 1970s relays, a huge job paid for by donations. When done Sky Ridge will be much more reliable and electrically ready to run until my grandkids have kids. 

Sky Ridge has behaved itself this season, knock on wood, but depending on the moon phase, the Dow Industrial, or something printed in the Farmer's Almanac, it has been prone to being finicky in past years. This major upgrade will put an end to that. No idea how we landed men on the moon with the same control system that runs the lift.

Finish the lifts then back to building snowmaking!

Bus Tickets for Saturday. This is an extra day, so thank the bus drivers who are making this possible for all bus kids, Saturday or Sunday usual riders. Only two buses, but on normal program days they are not at capacity. Sunday kids, get tickets too.

Give it until 10 AM to buy tickets. We are having a little website issue that should be fixed by then. Just keep clicking the bus. Tickets will show up.

Week 6 Video below from Wild Mustang Creative. Just click and smile.

Haven't written a story lately. The past has a little to show us.

It is Sunday, March 30^th and Harold is standing in the backyard of his house he built a few years past at the edge of Reno, just off the dirt road, California Ave. He looks west to the Truckee Canyon to see nothing but more dark clouds. The wind has come up again, harder. The new trees are straining against the stakes. This a bad storm. It is about to blizzard in town. On the radio is the news trains can’t travel over Donner Summit because of the five feet of snow fallen since Saturday. This is a storm that is going in the record books and does.

His wife was away in California being treated for an illness. His fourteen-year-old son, Jim, and several additional neighborhood teenage boys left to backpack to Hunter Lake to fish under clear skies last week. No word from any of the parents if they have returned. Another event makes him worry while he stares at the black rotary phone and smokes his pipe, Labrador puppy, Meg, at his feet. Gaylene, their oldest child, but still young, married to an Army 2^nd lieutenant, is in labor.

Granddad said he just stared at the phone all night waiting for a call, any call. I was born early Monday morning, on the second floor of St. Mary’s Hospital before there was a third floor. Jim, Roy, and the other boys waited out the storm in WWII surplus tents for a few days and then hiked home, not thinking a thing about being stranded with feet of snow falling. Years later at Thanksgiving dinners, they always added they were more upset because they didn’t catch a single fish.  

The way this family story was told, that there was nothing to worry about, all worked out, but even as a child, I knew that might have been the longest night of my grandfather’s post-war life. The 50s were a different time, even in Reno, with extremely independent kids, and party phone lines, FA2-5225, but still nerve-racking for a father.

The point? Storms happen this time of year, big storms. Sky Tavern got a late start this season, yet we have had some truly great weekends. This weekend and maybe the next, we could see winter in spring. Bring a Friend Day might be a powder day. This week’s spring break days may have wind holds. This is all a part of winter sports. Why you bought all that warm winter gear at Ski Swap back in November. In July, at 106 degrees you will miss having to wear mittens!

See you soon.

Bill.

Board of Directors Meetings are the 3rd Wednesday of the month at Greg's Garage/Carquest Training Rooms. 6th Street. 6 pm.