Squaw Valley USA
Squaw Valley, California
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Let's face it: You can't go wrong at Lake Tahoe, the cerulean-blue expanse ringed by seven sunny different ski and snowboard playgrounds that average 35 feet of snow per season. But only Squaw has hosted the Olympic Winter Games, and only Squaw boasts 34 lifts, 16 bowls, an average expert pitch of 37 degrees and 4,000 skiable acres with more than 170 trails, most of them for advanced skiers. And those ski movies you've been watching all fall? Warren Miller shot his first film here in 1950, and we'd bet that good chunks of the 2007 high-def ski movie harvest feature Squaw, where Shane McConkey, Ingrid Backstrom and Scot Schmidt are all part of the freeride team. (Glen Plake is another Tahoe local.) Buy a copy of Squallywood, a 280-page guide to the best cliffs and technical lines written by Robb Gaffney. Better yet, enroll in one of Gaffney's brand-new clinics -- you'll be filmed for your own DVD. A tip: December is the snowiest month at Squaw.
Squaw's proving ground is the Palisades, a series of snow-filled tendrils off Squaw Peak. This is your chance to straightline like the ski-film stars.
South Lake Tahoe throbs with all-night action (check out Whiskey Dicks Saloon), but you'll first want to kick off the boots at Le Chamois, the base-area bar, for pizza and pitchers of Bud.
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Photos: Courtesy of Nathan Kendall/SVSC
