Latte’s been having some health problems recently so we decided not to take any far-away snowboarding trips this year. She gets really stressed out when we leave her for more than a couple of days, and in her current state, such a stressful situation might very well do her in. Now that she’s on steroids, she’s doing much better so we decided to do a local trip to Tahoe and bring her along.

We actually headed up to Tahoe on Sunday in the middle of a big storm. “Awesome,” we thought, “fresh powder!” Just 35 miles from Truckee, the highway patrol closed the roads and turned everybody around, not because there was too much snow, but because visibility was really poor. Ordinarily, we would have just found a hotel nearby and just headed up the next morning. We had Latte with us though, so we would have to find a place that allowed dogs which can be tough. We had dinner with the hopes that things would clear up, but they didn’t. The condo we had booked was willing to cancel our reservation without any charges and so we just decided to head back home and perhaps try to come back again later in the week.

We headed up again on Wed night, this time with perfect weather. The storm we had driven in just a few days ago had left a lot of snow, but it warmed up quite a bit in the ensuing days and so there was nary a sign of any powder. No big deal actually since I probably wouldn’t have thought much about fresh Tahoe powder anyway being the powder snob that I am. We hit Squaw the first day and Northstar the next day. Conditions were spring-like with nice, warm weather and blue skies. Not epic conditions for a powder hound, but still lots of fun. Certainly better than staring at a monitor in a cubicle.

Unfortunately, Latte didn’t do as well as we would have liked in the condo. When we came back from Squaw the first day, we heaped praise on her because it looked like she had behaved herself. It wasn’t until a half hour or so later that we realized that our celebration was premature. While I was putting on my jeans, I noticed that they were a bit wet. At first, I thought it was just that my underwear was wet from snowboarding that day, but quickly realized that Latte had peed on my jeans! Damn dog!

The good thing was that my jeans (and one of my shirts that was also laying on the ground) pretty much absorbed all her pee and so very little got onto the carpet. Perhaps Latte peed on my clothes because she was smart enough to know it would absorb it. Or maybe she was trying to tell me something? Hmmm…

The original plan was to hit Alpine Meadows on Sat before heading home. On that morning, however, Judy was feeling really sore in her legs and since I just never got into the snowboarding mood this season (I just want to climb!), we both decided to head home a little earlier. I had pre-purchased our lift tickets through REI, but luckily, we were able to sell them to the first people we approached.

So that was our first, and likely only, snowboarding trip this season. I did manage a few shots during the trip, most of which are of Latte.

Posted by Roger at 6:58 PM.