Ski Special: Tahoe : A Sweet Ski Tradition : Once a Snowbound Society Playground With a Disney Touch, Little-Known Sugar Bowl Remains an Old-Fashioned Resort Anyone Can Love

It was 1935, and ski fever was just beginning to invade the West. Hannes Schroll, an Austrian daredevil ski racing champion, had been selected to represent his country in the first-ever Federation International du Ski championship race on the West Coast, held on Mt. Rainier in Washington. When Schroll came yodeling out of the clouds that had settled on the course to win an easy first, a couple of West Coast ski pioneers, Don and Mary Tresidder--who had just opened California’s first ski resort, Badger Pass Lodge, in Yosemite--were standing at the finish line. They needed a colorful director for their fledgling ski school, and they’d decided that Schroll was their man.

The Austrian spent two years at Badger Pass, then started traveling the Sierra looking for a place to build his own resort. Over the Fourth of July weekend in 1938, one of Schroll’s friends pointed out to him that snow was still visible in a bowl of rock near Donner Summit. Schroll went to have a closer look, and liked what he saw.

What Schroll had in mind was a fashionable, exclusive facility patterned after the famous old Alpine ski resorts of Europe. He found willing investors among other former pupils from Yosemite, including such prominent San Franciscans as J. D. Zellerbach, chairman of the board of Crown Zellerbach Paper Co., W. W. Crocker, president of Crocker Bank, and Jerome Hill, grandson of Great Northern Railroad founder James Hill. (Schroll later married Jerome’s sister, Maude.) Another major stockholder was a ski enthusiast from Southern California named Walt Disney. One of Sugar Bowl’s three main peaks was dubbed Mt. Disney in his honor. (Sugar Bowl itself was so christened because Schroll and his partners thought the fine, crystalline snow looked like sugar.)

The resort--including an Alpine-style lodge rather pretentiously named Le Grand Hotel and a single-chair lift up Mt. Disney, the first chair lift in California--opened in December, 1939. Its first season turned out to be its last before the outbreak of World War II: The resort closed for practical and patriotic reasons in 1940, and didn’t reopen until the winter of 1945-46. Since then, though, it has been going strong, in a low-key sort of way--remaining popular with San Francisco’s upper crust, but also drawing a small band of regulars from all over the state and the socioeconomic map.

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Sugar Bowl has facilities for every kind of skier, from bumbling beginners to double-black-diamond stars. It also has great snow. According to the U. S. Forest Service, Donner Summit receives the most snowfall and maintains the deepest pack in the Sierra because of its location on the summit of the westernmost ridge. For the past 108 years, an average of 382 inches (nearly 32 feet) of snow has fallen annually on the site. The snow starts earlier, too: Moisture-laden clouds riding the westerlies from the Pacific Ocean begin to dump snow at Donner before moving on toward Lake Tahoe and the numerous other ski resorts created in the region in the past three decades. And since most runs face north, away from the sun, the snow lasts longer.

I’ve been skiing at Sugar Bowl for about 20 years, and obviously its great snow is one of its attractions to me. But I like other things about it, too: It isn’t very crowded, to begin with. It doesn’t have the we’re-doing-you-a-favor attitude you find at some ski resorts. And it feels a bit separated from the rest of the world, as if you’ve just dropped into some European mountain hideaway. Squaw Valley offers great skiing; Sugar Bowl is an event.

On my most recent visit last January, my boyfriend and I arrived in the evening, after dinner. Leaving our car in the underground garage across the valley from the resort (cars are not allowed into Sugar Bowl in winter), we hopped onto the Magic Carpet, an enclosed gondola traveling to the Sugar Bowl Lodge. As we moved through the silent darkness, with light snow falling against the windows, I watched the distant lights of the lodge, and of the Tyrolean-style houses that surround it, growing nearer. We might have been in Alpine Austria.

The lodge is a rustic-looking three-story structure, painted gray--solid, warm and welcoming. A bellman helped us with our skis--they go straight into storage lockers, so we don’t have to bother with them until we’re ready for the slopes--and carried our bags upstairs. Our room was white and bright, if rather Spartan, with floral bedspreads and a deck looking out on the slopes. There was a telephone but no TV. It snowed all night, but we settled in and felt cosseted and cozy.

We were awakened the next morning by the thump-thump of workers shoveling snow off the main deck of the lodge, just below our own small deck. It was a bright, clear, beautiful morning, and from our window, across a snowy meadow, we watched ski students gathering for their lesson, with Mt. Disney rising in the background.

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Sugar Bowl is comprised of three ski mountains--Mt. Disney, Mt. Lincoln and Christmas Tree Ridge--all interconnected by both lifts and ski trails. I long ago graduated from Nob Hill, a beginners’ chair lift at the foot of Mt. Disney, and now warm up on Christmas Tree’s intermediate runs before tackling the more difficult ones on Disney or Lincoln. (In the next four years, Sugar Bowl plans to open up more than 350 acres of additional intermediate terrain. )

After my warm-up, I felt ready for my favorite lift, the Silver Belt, up to the top of 8,383-foot Mt. Lincoln. The run, right beneath the lift, has the best powder and the most bumps, because it is too steep to groom. The upper gully has some narrow chutes and a great half-pipe, if you’re in the mood. The trouble with the run is that everyone on the lift has a ringside view of the action. It’s tough to walk into the lodge bar--the Belt Room, a gracious old place decorated with antique skis and photos from Sugar Bowl’s past--when half the room has seen you sidestepping down the mountain.

Back at the lodge, we sipped hot buttered rum in the bar, then went up to change for dinner. “Appropriate attire” is still required in the dining room and bar after 6 p.m. At one time, that meant dresses for women and jackets for men. More casual attire is allowed now, but jeans and ski clothes remain forbidden. The dining room is a delightful place, dominated by a huge fireplace radiating warmth. We dined on smoked salmon and blackened swordfish, and sipped white wine from the extensive wine cellar. I went to sleep that night feeling that I was exactly where I should be, and that all was right with the world--or at least with the ski world.

GUIDEBOOK

The Sugar Bowl Game

Getting there: Sugar Bowl is about a four-hour drive from San Francisco, via Interstate 80 northeast to the Soda Springs/Norden exit, then three miles east on County 40 to the Sugar Bowl garage. The fastest way to Sugar Bowl from Los Angeles is by air through Reno. From the Reno airport, get on U.S. 395 north to Interstate 80 west and follow the same route as above. Reno Air has seven daily nonstop flights to Reno from Los Angeles, three from Ontario and two from Burbank. USAir offers two daily nonstop flights from LAX until Jan. 5, and Delta Airlines has one daily. Round-trip fares start at $100 (Burbank or Los Angeles) and $110 (Ontario). Where to stay: Sugar Bowl Lodge, P.O. Box 5, Norden, Calif. 95724; tel. (916) 426-3651. Rates (single or double occupancy): $88-$195 per night. A “ski week” package is available from $590 per person, double occupancy, including breakfast and dinner, lift tickets and daily instruction. Also included in the program are a night-skiing session, video showings of lessons, an optional ski race and class awards presentation. A bed and breakfast special runs $159 per night, double occupancy, and includes hotel room, lift tickets and breakfast (weekends and holidays excluded). Limited chalet rentals can be arranged through the hotel, at $350 to $500 per unit per night. (One sleeps as many as 24 people.) Lodging and ski packages are also available through the Tahoe North Visitors and Convention Bureau; tel. (800) 824-6348. They offer a midweek, non-holiday nightly rate of $55 per person, double occupancy, for a standard room and Sugar Bowl lift ticket. A wide range of accommodations, from dormitories to bed and breakfasts and motels, are also available outside Sugar Bowl, in nearby Soda Springs, Norden, Donner Lake and Truckee.

Skiing: Lift tickets cost $35 all day, $23 half-day for adults, $8 for whole or half-days for children, $15 for seniors over 60 (not valid on weekends and holidays), $60 for two-day adult tickets. Transportation between the Sugar Bowl garage and the lodge by the Magic Carpet gondola is free for hotel guests, and included in the price of lift tickets for skiers not staying at the lodge. For all others, the charge is $5. For reports on snow conditions at Sugar Bowl, call (916) 426-3847.

For more information: Contact the North Lake Tahoe Chamber of Commerce, P.O. Box 884, Tahoe City, Calif. 96145; tel. (916) 581-6900.