First ski day of the season!!!

So the coolest thing about this trip was everything except gas was FREE...oh, and I'm kinda gonna get paid for it!

I've been doing some travel pieces freelance for our magazine. So places I was gonna go anyway, just snap a few picks get a little more info and bing bang boom, payday!

I had a free ticket to China Peak (yes, it's no longer Sierra Summit, the long national nightmare is over!) and then mom gave me a voucher for a free night at Best Western in Fresno. Sooooo cool!

I went last Thursday, Dec. 16 and was going to ski Dec. 17 as well since I had another free ticket, but it was too stormy and I am too wimpy so I visited w/dad and others and headed home Friday.

So here was my wonderful wonderful ski day! The snow was excellent as was the weather.

This is from the top of the mountain, Chinese Peak, looking back at the valley. Yuck, I drove up through that and was so glad to see blue skies and sun!

Beautiful Huntington Lake from the top of Chair 1. I'd love to own a cabin someday on this lake. Gotta keep playing that lotto I guess!

The top of Chair 1. It was just so glorious!
The chair to the summit wasn't open, but that's OK, I can't ski that thick stuff anyway.
Boarder, shreddin' the gnar, dude...

The lodge.
Inside of the east lodge, called Mainstream, which has lots of improvements for families this year.

This is Tim Cohee, the new owner. He and some buddies who are silent partners bought China Peak last year from Snow Summit. He worked for Snow Summit back in the 80s and was one of the principle people behind the name change from China Peak to Sierra Summit.

As he told me, China Peak was a dump back then, pretty run down and they wanted a new name to disassociate any bad vibes people might have for it (there was a big legal bruhaha back then as well over the attorney in charge of the estate of the original owner, but that's another story). AND he said, they thought they could lure SoCal skiers who knew Snow Summit up by calling it Sierra Summit.

Didn't work. So 27 years later, he bought the place and changed the name back. Nice guy, took a lot of time out of his day to show me around.
End of the day. And lemme tell ya, the temperature dropped FAST.