When the schedule opens up, I feel compelled to take advantage and did so with five days in Southern California. I chose that area for friends and saw many amazing people with whom I have long-distance relationships. Some friends I see weekly, others monthly and ones with large swaths of land between us tend to be multi-yearly. Even with email and telephones, a good face-to-face needs to happen occasionally. And it did last week; thank you to everyone there who took care of me!
I originally planned this trip and thought about the beach, but when a monster storm dumped 3-4 feet in the mountains just East of L.A., I knew it would involve skiing. I discovered another classic area, a lá the recently exposed Magic Mountain, called Mt. Baldy Ski Lifts. Just looking at the trailmap, I could tell it would be a gem; Four old lifts serving three different areas with copious double-diamonds and a backside drawn on the map as a “site of future expansion” (said map was obviously designed no later than 1986). Needless to say, they have not expanded nor upgraded their chairlifts but the terrain remains accessible and we were able to find some pretty amazing runs with minimal hiking. It is steep and uncrowded, my two favorite factors in rating a mountain. And it is 90 minutes from downtown L.A. Awesome.