Graduation from green; D'vine Wine Bar

Spring skiing continued...

H and I left Bay Area at 5:30am since weather had been unusually warm, and we wanted to hit the slope early and end early to ski in the best possible snow condition.

We reach Kirkwood at about 9am, just as the lifts were opening. H suggested warming up on Mokelumme off chair #5, a blue slope I skied 2 weeks ago. This time though, she suggested using a narrower stance to improve carving.

Snow condition at 9am was surprisingly good. Unlike our previous trip, it was not icy, probably because of the warmer weather. However, it was still cold enough for the snow not to melt into mash.

Mokelumme is still a little too steep for me to work on technique, so I practised mostly on Lower Monte Wolfe. I was slowly gaining confidence and by my third or fourth run down Lower Monte Wolfe, I skied down the entire slope without stopping. The downside to gaining all this speed was my pole timing was all messed up. I was not initiating my turns with my poles, instead was sticking them out after my turns had started.

Snow condition gradually turned bad as the morning worn on. The snow became wetter and lumps of snow began to form. My inside foot was sometimes trapped by the lumps of snow during turns and made me fell down several times. Conscious of the wet, lumpy snow, I tired lifting my inside leg higher to avoid the lumps. While this helped enforced better carving, but also made each run more tiring.

I broke for lunch at about noon and had a pull pork sandwich with slaw. There was a band playing in the Kirkwood Mountain Village square, so I had live music to enjoy with food. Hit the slope again at 1pm and continued skiing on the 2 blue slopes. Due to the wet snow condition, I was unable to work on my stance as much as I prefer, but was feeling very comfortable going down both blue slopes. H jokingly commented I had graduated from the green slopes.

We had planned to stop skiing at 3pm, but H caught a second wind and we did not stop until 4pm when the lift closed.

We checked into City Center Motel in Carson City. After a quick shower, we took a stroll inside the Carson Nugget casino. Compare to Vegas, casino in Carson city are tiny. Since neither H nor I gamble, and I was bothered by the smoking, we left the premise after a quick look around.

Dinner was at D'vine wine bar and bistro. This is a fairly new establishment and I was unable to find any review about it on the web. But we were glad we came.

The exterior of the wine bar looked a little run down and cold, but the interior was new and warm. There was also live music. We ordered the roasted salmon and the raspberry pistachios salad. Shared a lovely flight of 5 wines. Finished the evening with a mixed berry cobbler with ice cream. For more on D'vine Wine Bar, please read my review on Yelp!

H and I had a wonderful evening and would come back to D'vine wine bar on future ski trips.