After a fun morning of cruising around Palisades, where Travis grew up skiing, we ventured to a small, private area called White Wolf Tahoe nestled inbetween Alpine Meadows and Palisades. As we pulled up the gate, Travis hopping out of his truck, motioning us through and up a skinny dirt road. As we rounded the corner on the road, we were awstruck with the untouched snow on the surrounding mountains. It was pristine, like the snowy backdrops in car commercials, except it is the actual property that most winter car commercials are filmed on. Flawless, and we had it all to ourselves.

Skins on, boots in walk mode, they picked out their route and made their way up the mountain between the granite rocks. We watched from below as Troy kept us company, telling us the story of how he gained this 460 acre property from the Southern Pacific railroad in the 80s. Originally only wanting to purchase five acres of it, he found out the land couldn’t be subdivided and the railroad granted him all of the acreage. The land includes the iconic KT-22 mountain at Palisades at the chairlift that sits on it.

Through a few more rock faces and around a corner, they approached the top of a more technical chute, of which they decided would be another fun descent. They switched into ski mode and Travis popped on his Mountain Memories Anorak. Both picked out the best descent lines from above. Marie started down the slope first, veering skiers-left of a small rock drop and back down to us. Travis followed, only to ski over the drop catching a bit of air. Once they met up with us at the bottom, Troy was so excited about the two skiing those lines on his property, he named the two chutes “Ganong and Gagnon,” after the Travis and Marie. Not only did we make some memories that day, but they made history and we were happy to have the opportunity to document it.