"The rest of the world looks to California to see how it manages its water resources," says snow scientist, Randall Osterhuber. "We've even had scientists from China visit our snow lab to study flood forecasting and stream gauging."

Osterhuber, 45, is Director of the Central Sierra Snow Laboratory atop Donner Summit. Understanding the seasonal, spatial, and physical variations of snow packs and alpine watershed climatic regimes is essential if California water managers are to have sufficient resiliency to cope with climatic change.

Most Tahoe resorts didn't even allow them on their slopes until the mid-1980s. The almost surf-like form, with one foot forward and the trailing ski carving, attracted a cult-like following quite foreign to the smug, hip set at alpine resorts.

How wrong we critics were.

Freeheel (Telemark and Randonee) Skiing

Author, Jennifer Woodlief, pulls no punches about Johnson's meteoric rise to international fame and the reasons for his self-destructive descent. Woodlief could have written an inspirational saga. But her story is full of grit and harsh personal sequences, an un-flinching and historically rich rendering of a ski champion's troubled career.

My mother, in a slightly mocking tone, would read out loud the pages of single-space sentences recounting the Dalgren’s past year of accumulating successes.

December 16, at the inaugural U.S. Snowboardcross Championships at Mount Hood Meadows, Oregon, the Palisades Tahoe Freeride Team member placed third. This result, on the heels of two World Cup SBX wins, secured Holland a spot on the Olympic team roster at the 2006 Torino Winter Games. Heading into the next set of races January 4-5 at Bad Gastein, Austria, Holland remains ranked third in the world and first in the United States.

Please give me fresh powder, a lake full, a sea,
And, oh, what a happy skier I'll be.

Call it fluff, or freshies, or even white sauce--
I don't care what you call it, I don't care a toss.

Uncork those clouds and let them roar,
We who love powder, we know more is more!

I'll carve it on skinny skis, even board like a dork,
I've ripped it from Europe to upstate New York.

Over steeps, down chutes, poached it like a rat,
Powder's great...except when it's flat.

Don't bore me with groomed, I might as well fall;

By far the most common injury for snowboarders is wrist injuries. Last season, Tahoe Forest Hospital in Truckee admitted over 500 patients to their Emergency Room (ER) for wrist injuries.

"It was almost like an epidemic," says Dr. Michael MacQuarrie, the hospital’s Director of Emergency Services.

Minks feels his way through a ceaseless torrent of white toward the snowgun. He bends over the hose and touches the connecting valve as carefully as the way one touches a still animal that may or may not be alive.

There are four such huts built and maintained by volunteers: Bensen, built in 1949; Peter Grubb built in 1938-9; Ludlow built in 1958; and Bradley (Pole Creek) re-built in 1998.

Bensen Hut

"It's a marvelous area," says Tazuk, principle and guiding spirit of the project. "Dyer Mountain is the most northern mountain in the Sierra Nevada and it can provide a great diversity of runs. Dyer's summit offers superb views of Mount Lassen and Lake Almanor. It can be world-class skiing."