Snowcial + Heavenly 1/19/12

You can always count on Snowcial to bring together creative minds, social skills and skiers/snowboarders to Heavenly Resort. Last year I got my first taste of it and this year, I attended the welcome party and one day of snowboarding to celebrate the fun event. Unfortunately I couldn’t attend the whole weekend of events since I’m traveling up to Washington but the 24 hours with everyone was a blast.

Last night, Snowcial kicked off with the welcome party and poker tournament at Harvey’s Resort in South Lake Tahoe. The hashtag #snowcial has been blowing up with resort and industry skiers and snowboarders making their way to the event. I headed to the event with Ashley Smith who is now working at Heavenly.

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The fun part of the night is always catching up, meeting new people and playing in the Poker Tournament. This year I did much better at the Blackjack but really sucked at the Poker Tournament. It was a blast being able to hang out with Chris Rudolph from Stevens Pass, Joe Johnson from the Canyons, the marketing team and my buddy Ashley from Heavenly, Harvey and Henrik from Freeskier Magazine, Jon from Snowboard Magazine, Laura from Gannet, Dave from Aspen and many more I’m forgetting.

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For Thursday morning, it was a tad rough getting up but I met everyone inside Harvey’s at 8:30am geared up and ready to go ride Heavenly for the day. We loaded a bus and headed over to the California side where the wind wouldn’t effect us as much.

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The California side of Heavenly had a couple lifts running and we could get in fresh groomers laps almost to ourselves for quite a bit. We met up with a bunch of Heavenly instructors who would be our guides or instructors for the day.

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First turns of the morning with Lars Ames

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Epicmix is a big part of Snowcial and one of the many topics this weekend. Our group ended up getting some great photos that include sport poses and a pyramid. Hopefully those ones come up but here’s the group shot we took together at the beginning of the day.

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Laura Cochran from Gannett Digital enjoying the groomers

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Cruising the slopes

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We were only out on the slopes in the morning but it was great to spend the time lapping the groomers and chatting it up on the lift. I had a really great time freeriding with Lars and Dan our guide, plus everyone else that joined in. Definitely will try to make it longer next year!