Journeys›Photograph

Cloudy Days on the Mountain at Palisades

·Placer County, California·#winter#skiing#snow#lake tahoe#landscape-photography
Snowy mountain slope with trees overlooking a large blue lake and distant snow-capped mountains under a cloudy sky.

Up at Palisades for the day, and this was evidently not one of the 300 cloudless days the resort likes to advertise. A gray shelf sat over the whole basin from the top of the upper mountain at 8,000 feet, and under it the lake held that deep blue against the North Shore ridges, snow on the far peaks above Incline.

The cover is thinner than it ought to be for early January — brown patches on the sun-facing slopes below the ridgeline, rock showing through where the 400-inch average says there should be more by now. One chair hung empty over the rope line at the top station, nobody loading, the ropes and bamboo marking off what's skiable from what isn't.

The better view was actually away from the lake. Over the back side toward Truckee the clouds broke into a bright strip low over the valley, ridges layered gray all the way out. A handful of skiers working down the bowl below, small against the snow, and then it was our turn.

Snowy mountains and dense evergreen forests surround a large blue lake under a partly cloudy sky.A snowy mountain landscape with ski lifts, a deep blue lake, and distant snow-capped mountains under a cloudy sky.A ski lift and chair overlook a snowy mountain slope, pine trees, and a large blue lake under a cloudy sky.A snowy mountain landscape with evergreen trees, distant peaks, and an overcast sky, with several people on a ski slope.Snow-covered mountain slopes in the foreground with dark forested mountains and distant hazy peaks under a cloudy sky.A wide mountain landscape with snow-dusted slopes in the foreground and many forested peaks under a partly cloudy sky.

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