For many undergraduate residents, dreams of sleds, skis and snowmen melted away last Thursday, when severe weather prompted Stanford’s Risk Management Department to cancel all ski trips to the Lake Tahoe area scheduled for that weekend.

Since most dorms had already secured buses and cabins, they stand to lose thousands of dollars in rental costs.

Insurance and liability were not the main factors in the decision, said Tina Dobleman, director of the Risk Management Department.

“It was really just a safety issue,” she said. “The weather forecast was so serious, so much snow, and they were anticipating that the roads would be closed.”

As of Friday morning, the National Weather Service was predicting up to 10 feet of snowfall for the weekend, with wind gusts approaching 100 mph at the peaks of the Sierra Mountains. Despite warnings about ice and poor visibility from the California Highway Patrol, Interstate 80 — which links Sacramento to the Lake Tahoe area — was officially open to traffic for most of the weekend.

Had the highways been closed for longer, the cost of cabin rental would most likely be returned. But because the main highway only remained closed for 13 hours on Friday night, rental agreements did not guarantee a full refund.

Toyon had reserved five cabins in South Lake Tahoe, with total costs approaching $4,000, according to Toyon resident Will McColl.

“We’re still waiting to see if we’ll get refunded, but so far it looks like we’re going to have to bear the cost,” said Kent Casimir, a Toyon Eating Club Manager and one of the organizers the ski trip.

Haus Mitteleuropa, a Row House, also suffered a financial loss from the weekend. House Manager Alex Pocek said that the entire cost of the cabin was lost, and that her dorm could not afford to rent another cabin later in the quarter.

“Even for the houses who are trying to reschedule, there aren’t a lot of places that have availability at this point,” she added.

Although Pocek said the decision was “warranted,” she expressed frustration with the Risk Management Department, and her dorm plans to seek some restitution from the University.

“We’re probably going to go through the regular channels of Res Ed [the Office of Residential Education], but I don’t see a plausible way for us to get reimbursed,” Pocek said.

Josh Schiller, the assistant director of Res Ed, who is acting as a liaison between the dorms and Risk Management, said that not every dorm staff was disappointed when he informed them of the cancellations.

“Some students indicated that they were relieved that the decision had been made for them, because they were not comfortable with the weather conditions,” he said.

In regard to compensation for rental costs, Schiller said that Res Ed is cooperating with Risk Management “to determine the amount of non-refundable money that can be reimbursed to dorms.”

In spite of Risk Management’s decision on Thursday, Pocek and others from the Haus Mitt staff were planning to take a smaller, private trip to Tahoe, in order to get some use out of the rented cabin, Pocek said. However, even this private trip was impossible.

Pocek was told by Michelsen’s Vacation Rentals, the company that rented cabins to dorms including Haus Mitt, that Stanford was barred from the house for the weekend.

“I called Augie [Galvan, Assistant Director of Student Management on the Row] and asked if students hypothetically still went up, if they would be able to use the house. He said that they could go up, but they would not be able to stay at the houses,” Pocek said.

Schiller said the rental companies “were informed that all of the Stanford groups would not be traveling to Tahoe for snow trips that weekend.”

Ski trips are slated for most weekends of winter quarter and with the prospect of heavy snow through February, the Risk Management Department may again have to be the bearer of bad news.

La Maison Francaise has a trip scheduled for this weekend.

“We’re just going to keep a close eye on the weather,” said senior Evonne Johnson, a co-organizer of that trip.

“The number one priority is resident safety so if the weather is bad, or roads close, there’s nothing we can do,” Johnson said.

A total of six Row Houses had to cancel their snow trips last weekend, according to Galvan, but Residential Education could not provide a campus-wide list of the affected dorms.