Sierra Summer Solstice Snowstorm Surprise
Reno
June 22nd
(Part I of Andrew’s summer 2025 adventures!)
I did not expect to spend the first day of summer trapped in a ski patrol cabin at 9,000 feet, with 40 other people, for two hours, as a blizzard raged outside. The furthest we could see out the window—usually Lake Tahoe—was a sandwich board, 50 feet away, announcing the aid station: “Welcome to Siberia!” It was supposed to refer to the name of the chairlift. But what do you expect when you go for a trail run at a ski resort?
The Broken Arrow. My third time running it. The 46 kilometers is the easy part. The 9,000 feet of vertical gain is the hard part. The thundersnow is the insurmountable part.
The first lap was the best mountain running I’ve done in my life. Had I kept up my pace I would have finished in six hours. Two hours faster than two years ago, and three hours faster than last year. But I wouldn’t have kept up my pace. My knee exploded as I started the second lap. Ooops. Maybe it’s for the best the race got cancelled. I was in 252nd place (of 553) when I passed the last timing pad, moments before being ushered into the cabin. Only 153 people finished.
This year I trained more than I ever have. I was so conscientious about nutrition. Gel after gel, my watch beeping every 45 minutes, upped to two gels after I started feeling low towards the end of the first lap. Last year it was hot, sunny, miserable. My shirt tie-dyed by sweat stains. This year I wanted cold. I got my wish. The weather was perfect, until it wasn’t. When I left the campground at 5:15 my car thermometer registered 32. By the start at 7 it was mid-40s. Perfect running temperatures. I barely drank any of the water in my running vest. When we burst out onto the ridge the second time, it was cloudy enough I didn’t need sunglasses. This is so great! But, oh shit, is that rain over Truckee to the north? Which direction are those clouds moving?
I’m not sure what happened with my knee. It feels like the same issue that was bothering my other knee a few years ago, which my PT diagnosed as too much biking ⇒ quads disproportionately bigger than glutes ⇒ quads dragging patella too much laterally. But it seemed like it was the downhill pounding at the end of the first lap that set it off, and it’s not something that has ever been an issue before (with that knee), so who knows. But otherwise I felt great! So great! Physically, muscularly, psychologically. All that training—and it wasn’t even THAT much—actually paid off! “Andrew, I read your notes, and I did the homework, and now I understand what’s going on in class!”
Very quickly on the second lap it became apparent that I couldn’t run. The course is half walking anyway—no one runs the uphills—so it’s not as big of a problem as it sounds. Walking felt fine. The uphills—which are my strongest suit—still felt great. (Why was my knee OK with that?) So I was hobbling the downhills, speed-walking the flats, being passed on both, and then, on the uphills, catching my passers, and re-overtaking many of them. My place ranking dropped, but not that much. The final half of the loop—almost all downhill—is where I really would have been left in the dust. But the last half never happened!
The course is two loop around Palisades Tahoe (”Squaw Valley” until a few years ago)—through a forest, up along a ridge, and back down again. The high point is Washeshu Peak (f/k/a “Squaw Peak”), a weird mesa-like massif, with a dozen acres of flat summit covered in sagebrush and wildflowers. By the time I got there the second time, the air felt great but the clouds were ominous. The final climb to the summit is a scramble over broken rock, with a steel cable to hold on to, and a permanently-fixed steel ladder the last 30 feet. “Maybe I won’t touch the cable this time,” I thought. Can’t get around touching that big metal ladder, though. It turned out later I was one of the last people to climb the ladder before they started sending people back. On the plateau, running past the radar dome, I thought I saw a speck of something white, fluttering down. Then a second speck. I called out to Stephanie (bib #2934), a few feet in front of me. “Is that snow?” “Maybe it’s hail?,” she said.
Three minutes later we were in the ski patrol cabin in the midst of what was unambiguously a snowstorm.
How many people inside? 30? 40? Very cozy. Everyone in shorts with two inches of inseam. Snow outside and naked thighs inside. The dude next to me was a Ph.D. student at Cornell and we talked about Ian Golden—the godfather of the Ithaca running scene. Lots of other Bay Areans and at least one other Palo Altan. People comparing notes on their recent 100-milers. We brought in the aid station food. Peanut butter pretzels frosted with fresh powder. Most people had phones and were getting messages from friends trapped elsewhere. At High Camp, which has a restaurant, the staff were giving them hot chocolate and baking them cookies. At Headwall a group was clustered in an emergency bunker. At Snow King, a dozen people in the lift operator shack. At KT-22, they had broken into a docked tram cabin. No food in the tram cabin: just a broom, dustpan, and mouse droppings. The storm wasn’t just at elevation: it was blizzarding down in the valley at the base, at 6,000 feet. The entire festival, with vendors and foodmongers, was being shut down.
It did not escape notice that a dozen miles away is where one of the most famous stories of being trapped in a cabin in a snowstorm had taken place. The local running organization is the “Donner Party Mountain Runners.” One of the members said, “See, if we end up being stuck here for a while…”
Snow might have been the Donner Party’s problem but it wasn’t ours, fundamentally: it was the lightning. Like a swimming pool. An initial thirty-minute hold when a lightning strike was reported within ten miles. That’s why everyone got routed into the emergency shelters. Then more strikes. The hold kept getting extended, like equity getting re-upped and the vesting schedule resetting. (Tahoe is a summer colony for Silicon Valley.) A huge flash, right outside the ski patrol cabin, a giant girthy splintering bolt and simultaneous boom. Thundersnow: a meteorological medley of one solstice with the other. It took ninety minutes for the race to be officially cancelled. Another hour for all of us to get driven down. Small groups, one truck at a time, carefully inching down access roads I didn’t know existed. Eventually we got impatient and eight of us (plus the driver) ran out and stuffed into a crew-cab Tundra. The snow was still coming down hard, big flakes, zero visibility, three or four inches already accumulated. Someone had made a snow angel. June 21st in the Sierra Nevada.
Truly, this might be the best race I’ve ever done. It’s also the only one I’ve ever DNF’d. R. kept using the word “silly” to describe things when I was in Montana last month, and that’s the word here: this was the silliest, most ridiculous race I’ve ever done. The knee was a bummer, the thundersnow made up for it, and the first lap was holy. And even stopping at Siberia (my favorite part of the mountain to ski in winter!) I still ran 75% of the course by mileage, and 90% by uphill vert. Brendan (the legendary race director and founder) still gave us finisher hats and medals.
What’s the lesson? Train hard, fuel well, and be careful what you wish for.
Now I’m in Reno, at a combination coffee shop/bar/vinyl record shop. Tonight I’m headed south on 395 to the hot springs near Bridgeport. (My knee will thank me.) Then on to Bishop tomorrow to meet up with H. for trout and trad in the Eastern Sierra. Will my knee survive 1500’ of alpine 5.7? Stay tuned!