Sledders welcome clear day

Elizabeth Lindung stood on the snow at the end of Kings Canyon Road Sunday afternoon as a boy approached on an inner tube.

Nine-year-old Brandon Foley, sliding down the road from above, spun to a stop in the parking area, exasperated.

"That was a great run. How far up did you go?" asked Lindung.

"Way far up there," said Brandon, a student at Fritsch Elementary School.

Thousands who took to the hills Sunday to enjoy clear blue skies, which should hold until Tuesday, according to forecasters.

"Tuesday, we can expect mostly cloudy and windy skies. By afternoon, probably a slight chance of rain with the snow level at 7,000 feet," said Mark Brown, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Reno.

Lindung, who had brought her family up from San Diego to visit her parents, plans to make the most of today's partly cloudy skies.

"We're going skiing," said Lindung, who graduated as Elizabeth Wuestenberg from Carson High School in '83. She left her parents' home on Annapolis Avenue that year to attend the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md.

"Our boys still have another week off school so we're going skiing."

They plan to schuss the slopes at Mount Rose, where tickets are only $10 today if you bring in a used pass from Saturday or Sunday. Rose reports a snow depth of 5 to 10 feet. The Lindungs may also go to Diamond Peak, which reports between 79 and 128 inches at the top.

Kirkwood Mountain Resort south of Lake Tahoe reports 290 inches overall, including several feet last week.

Snowfall like that means good business for snow shovel sales.

"Yeah, shovels, snowmelt, snow blowers - all that stuff is moving really fast," said Richard Visaya, a sales manager at Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouse in Carson City.

"In fact, I think we're out of stock right now on all our bigger snow blowers."

Forty-pound bags of Goldenfire wood pellet stove fuel and Road Runner calcium chloride snow-melting compound were stacked in the entry way next to bundles of firewood.

All three will be helpful over the next few days. Tuesday's mostly cloudy skies are expected to give way to rain or snow on Wednesday. It should be windy, too.

"Southwest winds will be increasing to 20 or 30 mph during the afternoon on Tuesday with gusts up to 35," Brown said.

Contact Karl Horeis at khoreis@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1219.