This peak is often referred to as Squaw Valley’s crown jewel. It was named for the 22 kick turns Sandy Poulsen (the wife of Wayne Poulsen who founded Squaw Valley with Alex Cushing) made the first time she skied the legendary peak. “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 was 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.”

Runs found on KT-22’s Peak, el. 8,200

Mosley's:
Moseley’s Run, land of monster bumps and jelly legs, is the flagship of KT’s fleet of double diamond terrain. Bumps on the steep slope stay cold, hard, and gullied into massive mounds storm-to-storm. If one wants to test endurance go no further. A non-stop down the slopes steep fall-line confronts the skier and rider with the difference between the myth and reality of their skills. Originally called the West Face (strange, because it doesn’t face west at all) it was renamed February 27, 1998 in recognition of Jonny Moseley’s life long commitment to Squaw Valley, freestyle skiing, and his winning the gold in Nagano.

Chute 75:
Today, the X-Generation goes Har Har when they hear tales of KT-22, but they don’t realize that up until the 60s you didn’t really ski the 75 Chute, you traversed it, all except Swiss skier Joel Auckenthaller. Skiing its rippled compressions is like facing 1,800 feet of hand to hand combat. You have a sense of being outnumbered in a gunfight. The top part of the run, named after the 75mm Gun emplacement you can still see, is like dropping a dime into a pay telephone.

During the 1960 Winter Olympics Peter Klaussen, Monty Atwater, and John Mortizia put together one of the most concentrated avalanche control programs in history. “One morning Monty and I were the only souls on the mountain, “Recalled the late Mortizia. “The weather was bad, and the only reason we were up there was to fire the 75mm recoilless rifle to protect the main lift. "We had completed the shooting and were getting away from any slidepaths when what should appear through the snowfall, but a long line of Sierra Clubbers on skis. They’d come across the ridge from their hut in Five Lakes. They came right across KT’s Rock Garden, about as bad a place as you’d want to be on that morning. They miraculously had walked underneath our barrage.”

Found on Squaw Valley’s Snow King Peak, el. 7,550’

Red Dog:
Its wide steep face is today the training ground for the Squaw Valley Freestyle and Race Teams, but during the 1960 Winter Olympics, the 7,550 foot elevation Red Dog Peak, originally called Little Papoose, and now known as Snow King, was the site of the ladies slalom and giant slalom events. Another Olympic event of equal importance also took place on Red Dog. During the opening Olympic Ceremonies, 1952 two-time Olympic Gold medallist Andrea Meade Lawrence (pregnant at the time) skied the Olympic Torch down from the top of Red Dog into Blyth Arena to begin the games.

Found on Granite Chief Peak, el. 9,050’

Swan Dive:
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 the chair, 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.