I’ve been in the San Francisco area for over two years.  I learned to snowboard at Keystone in Colorado and rode many of the ski resorts around Washington DC where I worked at the time.  One of my favorite resorts was Snowshoe is West Virginia.  It is small but nice and the resort is at the top of the mountain where  the lifts bring you back to the resort.  Since moving to San Francisco I wanted to return to the slopes but none of my friends skied.  Sure, they wanted to go and we kept saying we’d go some weekend but it never came together.  I didn’t know any of the area resorts or the best way to get there.  Then finally a friend mentioned the NISEI SKI CLUB’s trips and their discount for new members.  It looked great!  I signed up for trips 3 and 4.

Trip three began with Jake and myself riding the Muni, then the BART and a quick taxi to El Cerrito Community Center.  As with any good ski trip new snow is wonderful but for both of these trips the snow came during our bus ride to Reno.   Each time the bus had to stop and put on chains and we got in very late both times.  But conditions were wonderful for the next two days at Northstar.  Saturday night we enjoyed the large buffet at the Casino.  For trip #4 we again had snow on the trip out but we  managed a few hours of sleep before the hitting the slopes at Alpine.  Conditions were great on Saturday at Alpine.  Saturday evening we enjoyed pot luck and had a great selection of food.  Sunday we were back a Northstar for a wonderful day.  I even got my board waxed and enjoyed some chili and rice with cornbread at the top of Northstar.  One the way back we enjoyed most of a Jim Carrey movie, ‘Yes Man’ which reminds me I need to go rent that one and see how it ends :-).

I had a great time on both trips and was very happy to be on the slopes again.  I love how the club manages to take care of almost every concern:  Transportation, lift ticket,  room reservations, and food and drinks on the bus.  And what a great group of people.

Thanks NISEI Ski club for getting me back on the slopes.  See you again next year!