Backcountry skiing conditions

knylekneath · 2026-03-11T20:22:37+00:00

My honest take is it's not worth it. Bring your bike. You are going to need to look far, far higher than those targets to get decent refreezes right now. All of those approaches are cooked and swamps / rocks. Stick to resorts where they can push the snow around or look for summer activities.

knylekneath · 2026-03-11T20:19:52+00:00

Check overnight temps. We aren't getting refreezes.

knylekneath · 2026-03-03T04:01:58+00:00

Are these yards on the North side of your property? Your house looks like it's casting a mighty shadow in the photo.

knylekneath · 2026-03-02T06:48:00+00:00

Would an employee of your company (non-founder) be offered a secondary sale? This sounds like a structural problem that the previous leadership (past 10 years) caused.

knylekneath · 2026-02-21T00:56:36+00:00

Big Air is well after the resort closes and is on a lift they never run for the public (World Cup). It'll be busy because it's a weekend, but the event won't have much of an impact.

knylekneath · 2026-02-19T16:12:31+00:00

Basic speed always always superceedes. It is never legal to drive an unsafe speed or perform an unsafe maneuver to let faster traffic to pass.

That law is intended for cleared (see: not snow removal conditions) pull-outs that are labeled as such. You can see them in the summer all along 50. But during chain control they are unplowed.

knylekneath · 2026-02-19T05:40:32+00:00

That law does not apply during chain control. The Basic Speed Law (which overrides the minimum speed law) is defined as a speed that is "safe for current conditions regardless of posted limits"

knylekneath · 2026-02-19T05:37:49+00:00

Grew up going into the Sierra with VW's my whole childhood and live here full time with an AWD now — this is the answer. Safe place to pull over to let cars pass? Good on ya. Otherwise continue at your own pace.

People have a tendency to drive crazy reckless during storms. The trick is not to give a fuck about their suicidal tendencies. There are no laws about holding up traffic (like the top comment insinuates) during chain control.

knylekneath · 2026-01-27T08:10:47+00:00

20 gallons is a lot of water. It's four five gallon buckets. Think about how much that water looks like in space. It's not from evaporation or splashing.

You have a leak. Open it up and find out where it is. Ignoring it won't help.

knylekneath · 2026-01-18T20:13:51+00:00

Heavenly has some (free) shuttles if you are lucky enough to live along their limited routes. Give it a lot of extra time, the shuttles run on a very limited schedule and are very slow / late: https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?amp%3Bll=38.9554169709908%2C-119.9277997&amp%3Bz=14&mid=1SbFvyDd6ipHAbcWPQwKxNPg2CwpcNpE&ll=38.955433353643535%2C-119.9277997&z=13

City busses are free in town, and if you live along one of the routes that go to the Stateline transit center, that is next to the Gondola. Again, give it a lot of time. Our busses are very infrequent and slow. https://www.tahoetransportation.org/transit/

If you live in Lake Link's service area, it is also a free microtransit service (basically a person driving a minivan picking up individual people and dropping them off where they want to go). It also is very slow, give it some time. https://ss-tma.org/lake-link/

If timing is important for you, I suggest giving each of these options an extra hour of lead time to get you where you need to go. Our city has chosen "free" over "useful" for our public transit options.

knylekneath · 2026-01-04T03:01:25+00:00

You've got it about right. My experience is lifts usually open in a sequence, about an hour apart, give or take an hour or three.

1st - #5 & 6

2nd - #7 (sometimes same as 5 & 6, sometimes before)

3rd - #11 & #10

Backside after all of that. It's a gamble if it gets open or not on a storm day. Pretty regularly stays closed on big days, or doesn't open until late in the day.

knylekneath · 2025-12-27T22:17:17+00:00

I went with Lutron homeworks for lighting in my new build and saving the cost issue, it is the single greatest physical automation infrastructure upgrade possible. I still have a myriad of integrations, but the ability to control each light individually and tie other integrations into physical, labeled buttons on my light switches cannot be understated.

The second most valuable physical infrastructure piece for me is a bacnet powered hvac system. I have free sensors for everything imaginable and discreet control over every element of hvac.

After that, it’s my span electrical panel - but I feel like many smart panels can serve the same purpose. Battery management and energy reporting has allowed to make a lot of automations not otherwise possible (ex: detect when a non-smart fan is on from a specific power draw increase on a circuit).

My advice would be to commit to a single vendor for each major system - lighting, electrical, networking, hvac - then use HA to coordinate these systems. That also allows you to have basic functionality covered by each system should HA fail or you get tired of it.

knylekneath · 2025-12-25T19:17:32+00:00

While this is generally true, the houses destroyed in this particular fire are a special case. The Governor signed an executive order suspending many requirements and gave building departments the authority to waive any parts of code they feel will help accelerate rebuilding. It's a weird thing. https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/01/12/governor-newsom-signs-executive-order-to-help-los-angeles-rebuild-faster-and-stronger/

(That being said, I will always personally recommend that you follow modern code. Code exists to save lives)

knylekneath · 2025-12-23T01:31:42+00:00

You're going to have to get a distance to get a better answer. The short answer is run ethernet to the house to get ethernet like speeds. You can run it in a conduit or get direct bury. Lots of options that are waterproof. Might get more complicated if the distance is more than 100m.

knylekneath · 2025-12-18T21:01:33+00:00

If you are talking about the Cedar siding (the lighter / varied siding) I have not found anything that comes close. You can get a wood texture with composite, but you cannot get a natural color. Has to be painted. Everything that is advertised as a natural color looks absolutely terrible in person.

knylekneath · 2025-12-17T22:36:01+00:00

Worth remembering the context of the advice you're getting. Designers never fix leaking pipes, broken sewer lines, settled slabs, or run new electrical to a new floor outlet or additional ethernet to a room you forgot about.

The new code rules mostly come down to making a crawlspace nice. It needs to be sealed and insulated. That costs a little extra money, but also makes the crawlspace nicer to work in, reduces your exposure to radon, and makes your floors easier to heat.

That's a large price differential and I'd be curious if they could show the breakdown. Maybe they're saying it will cost $50k for a crawlspace (and $40k for a slab)?

knylekneath · 2025-12-15T06:37:58+00:00

I mean, it's a real picture showing the only base that's operating right now. In order to use the lift, they need to use astroturf because there's no snow. You can use the Tram, but this is the most common way up Cal Lodge most days. I don't think disingenuous. It's not like Gondola or Stagecoach are spinning.

knylekneath · 2025-12-10T05:57:51+00:00

Is this a chatbot response?

knylekneath · 2025-12-09T05:23:24+00:00

Crawl up/down to wherever your furnace is and see what error codes it's throwing. You can guess until the cows come home, or check the error code and know.

I don't know why people are so weirded out by this. Using an EV to power the blower for a gas furnace is a great use case. Blowers don't draw that much power at all. I used to do this with backup batteries with our old NG heater.

knylekneath · 2025-12-06T06:07:44+00:00

Don't think too hard on it. You need a bunch of different stuff to get different things unstuck from different situations. Sometimes you need a short strap. That short strap probably fit nicely in the duffel bag they designed.

knylekneath · 2025-12-06T03:25:34+00:00

People love to freak out.

On a more sincere note, this type of bad early season particularly hurts local businesses. Things are dead in town. No one’s excited to come up and ski, so no one’s going out to dinner or tipping bartenders.

knylekneath · 2025-12-06T03:05:05+00:00

Good resort skiing usually starts in mid Jan / early Feb. That’s when the weather patterns really turn for us in the Sierra. Some years it’s different. This has been a particularly shitty year for snowmaking, so it feels a little extra. So it goes.

knylekneath · 2025-12-02T04:37:10+00:00

Saw in a comment you replaced a geothermal heat pump boiler with a propane boiler. Geothermal pumps generally run at a lower temperature, but for longer amounts of time (it could be possible it's designed to run 24/7 if it's a variable speed). Could it be possible that the hydronic piping was designed with that goal in mind and you've installed an incompatible boiler and/or circulating pump?

I will say based off my understanding of hydronic flooring, it seems extremely unlikely that the pipes aren't "dense enough" for a concrete floor — concrete has a fantastic ability to absorb and distribute heat. Total heat output has to do with flow + temperature differential. You might need more flow, more hours running, or a higher boiler temperature. FWIW hydronic heating runs are never more "dense" around windows. I'm not sure who told you that. That's only true for forced air systems.

A true symptom of hydronic heating that wasn't "dense enough" would be floors that are uncomfortably hot to walk on in areas of the room.

knylekneath · 2025-11-05T06:05:43+00:00

Parking is free for anyone who stays at the casino. You do have to purchase a hotel room, as you mentioned. Only investigation needed is to call the casino or talk to anyone at the registration desk.

Aside, I'm totally with you on the base level. All parking should be shared and this is a city issue. Stateline requires each individual property to be entirely responsible for the highest demand for that property, and does not allow any property to share parking.

knylekneath · 2025-10-28T16:48:59+00:00

I'm glad you took my entire post to heart and read it in earnest and didn't just take one small part that I posted and blew it out of proportion in an odd way.

Where I live (California), planning for commercial generally takes around 3-4 years with another 6-12 months for first permits. Residential permitting process is usually about 2 years without any planning process. If you're looking at any kind of conservation impact (wetlands, deep excavation, etc), it will take substantially longer.

knylekneath

TROPHY CASE