Mountain Monikers

They come from miles, even oceans away to peer over ski tips down the treacherous or tranquil slopes overlooking Lake Tahoe. The view and the runs themselves can defy words.

But Tahoe resorts have names for them, names they assign to celebrated slopes for avalanches and good times past.

In the christening, the slopes gain not just a name, but also preserve a history.

THE Œ58, SUGAR BOWL: This double diamond slope is located off the ridgeline to the right of Mount Lincoln looking up the Silver Belt quad. One night, during a four-day March storm in 1958 that was to drop more than 11 feet of snow on top of Donner Summit, the wide-open, steep slope folded into a rumbling avalanche of destruction.

"The crown measured 15 feet," said Sugar Bowl Mountain Manager Don Beldon. "It ran all the way through Silver Belt, over Steilhung Gully and across the bottom terminal of the old Lincoln II Chair and into the motor room of Lincoln I."

The avalanche ripped out two towers and bent the return terminal. To this day, skiers can sometimes spot pieces of the chairlift that remain in nearby trees.

PREACHER'S PASSION, SIERRA-AT-TAHOE: Reverend Bruce Crawford of the Federated Church in Placerville loved to ski. Most days during the 1970s you could set your watch to his carving turns down a certain steep, narrow chute. The run had a lot of obstacles, but he liked it just as it was. He asked then owner Vern Sprock not to clear the run because he didn't want to share it with anybody else. They did clear it, but named it in honor of Crawford.

MOLLY HOGAN, DONNER SKI RANCH: The mighty little mountain resides across from Sugar Bowl. When its owner, Sacramento native Norm Sayler, was clearing a trail in 1958, he had to slide some logs down the run. The cable attaching the loop to his tractor snapped, and thinking quickly, Sayler tied a knot in the cable. He says when he learned the knot in his youth it was called a Molly Hogan.

D-8, ALPINE MEADOWS: When Alpine's original Summit Chair was being installed in 1961, there was a lot of heavy machinery rumbling along the access road at the top of the mountain. One loader, a D-8, got too close to the side and plummeted over the edge. The path left in its wake is named in honor of the machine. By the way, the driver survived the ride of his life.

HIS AND HERS, BOREAL: Located off Gold Rush under Chair 2, this slope was once littered with boulders and trees. When the trail crew was clearing runs, they came upon a boulder the size of Rhode Island right in the middle of the trail. At the time they didn't have enough explosives to blow the rock. Instead, they cut a path on either side of it through the trees. Afterwards, studying it from below, it looked like two restroom doors side by side. Since then the slope has been widened and the obstacles removed, but the name remains.

SWAN DIVE, SQUAW VALLEY: Below High Voltage Ledge, three quarters of the way up the Granite Chief Chair is another cliff area popular with snowboarders.

It's named after former patrolman Larry Swan. Swan, in his first year of patrolling, was sent up the chair to mark off the cliff area with a warning sign. He decided to drop the sign from the chair over the cliff area, then ski down and place it exactly. But when he went to drop the sign, he lifted it a bit above his head to aim it better onto the cliff.

Unfortunately, the sign caught partially in the sheave train of the cable above, jettisoning the rookie patroller 25 feet in the air. Luckily, he landed in a huge patch of newly fallen snow and wasn't hurt, except for his pride.

KT-22, SQUAW VALLEY: 22 kick turns by Sandy Poulsen resulted in the name of one of the greatest peaks in all North America.

"It got its name during the 1940s, soon after we'd purchased the valley from Southern Pacific,"recalls Sandy Poulsen. "The first time we skied that peak it had just snowed."

"I wasn't that good a skier and everyone else went first. I looked down and the terrain looked pretty concave. Everyone below were cutting slides. I was scared silly, in fact, I would have sooner stayed where I was until spring."

"I finally skied down from side to side across the slope doing a kick turn as soon as I reached the trees. My husband, Wayne, stood patiently below counting my turns. When I finally got to the bottom he'd counted 22. We'd recently come back from Alta, Utah were we'd skied with Fritz Wiesener. He was a famous climber who'd just come back off of K2. From the name K2 and 22 turns, we related the two situations and hence called the slope KT-22."