We had a decent start to the 2019′-2020′ Winter here in Tahoe. December was snowy, and the skiing was good. But then the faucet turned off, we experienced one of the driest February’s on record, and then the reality of a global pandemic took hold. Somewhere in there before the Spring Equinox, with the last few weeks of Winter, a textbook Miracle March showed up and reminded us how magical the Sierra can be after one good storm. Some ski areas claimed almost 10 feet of snow over the course of a few days, and while the reality of daily life started to shift in ways no one had anticipated, the backyard skin track became a nuanced healer. Ryan Salm wrote and photographed a story for Powder Magazine just as things were getting super deep, and super weird. The time we spent with all-star human Chuck Patterson for this story was quality, little did we know at the time how crazy things would get.
