By JULIE WATSON, SCOTT SONNER and JOHN ANTCZAK
RENO, Nevada — Going to the office has been no small feat for Jon Slaughter’s marketing team at Sugar Bowl, requiring the employees to dig down several feet and then tunnel through to the front door after a powerful blizzard dumped more than 10 feet of snow on the Northern California ski resort.
It was even more dramatic when they went upstairs and opened another door to the outside on the second level of the office building and were confronted by a solid wall of snow from floor to well above the door frame. His team posted a video of the door opening on X and wrote: “We’ve got some digging to do.”
“They’ve been chipping away at it since Friday, and had to tunnel down to the downstairs door to get in,” Slaughter said. “It definitely keeps you on your toes.”
The ski resort nestled 7,000 feet up among mountain peaks 46 miles west of Reno recorded the highest amounts of snow from the storm that began barreling into the region Thursday and was finally dissipating on Monday as it moved through the Sierra Nevada, according to the National Weather Service in Sacramento.
The weekend blizzard caused traffic backups and closures on Interstate 80 and other roadways and shut down ski resorts from the Mammoth Mountain Ski Area to Sugar Bowl with the warning covering a 300-milestretch of the mountains. It also left thousands of homes and businesses without power as fierce winds lashed the Sierra.
A long stretch of I-80 from west of Lake Tahoe over Donner Summit to the Nevada state line reopened to all but big rigs late Monday morning, but chains or snow tires were required, the California Highway Patrol’s Truckee office said. The mountain pass, which can be perilous in snow, is named for the infamous Donner Party, a group of pioneers who resorted to cannibalism after getting trapped there in the winter of 1846-1847.
Sugar Bowl along with many other resorts including Palisades Tahoe, the largest resort…
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