It Is What It Is

One thing is clear. There is absolutely no way you can please all of the people all of the time. Not everybody wants the same thing at their mountain, and making things even more confusing, some of us like the variety. When I tell people that I skied over 120 days last season, they always ask why I bothered. The truth is that all skiing is good. Even though I like powder, I have learned that not every day can be a powder day. So you take it as it comes…

Alpine Meadows has been grooming a lot of terrain these days, and today, the predicted “Tidy Bowl” did appear in Alpine Bowl. I lost count but I think I underestimated yesterday when I said it was 27 lanes wide. The grooming did indeed stretch from the farthest south trees near ABC to the northern trees near a triple wide Sunspot run, with only a short break near tower 20.

This created quite a storm of positive and negative comments on Alpine’s Facebook page on their post which borrowed our tagline of “groomers gone wild.” I have to agree with people that realize we are long past powder in Alpine Bowl. Most of that terrain had turned into blocky chunder. So when presented with a ton of groomer space, you have to recognize what you have and have fun with it. Combining the grooming with nearly empty slopes, it was a great day for high speed GS arcs, creating a mogul zipperline, or learning how to ski switch. I took today as an opportunity to work on my tele turns. I have learned that tele turns in corn corduroy can be just as much fun as a powder day – and today was no exception.

The park was also looking busier today. It seems that there’s now a better progression of features in the park that is attracting more skiers and boarders. It was a great day for park riding with comfortable temps, superb visibility and very little extra traffic in the park. For what it’s worth, there’s a similar storm of comments floating around Facebook regarding the park setup. It is what it is.

The weather forecast is still all over the place for the upcoming week and next weekend. We’re going to have to be patient and see what happens. One things is certain – if all we get is a dust on crust event, we’ll be very happy to have it falling on a smooth surface.

There’s definitely more moguls at Squaw Valley 😉