Some Dark Skies Over Alpine Meadows

Today was also not the weather we ordered at Alpine Meadows. Many of us sat indoors at work all week, dreaming of a springlike weekend at Alpine Meadows. We hoped to work on our goggle tans, drink beer at the Ice Bar and harvest corn on High Traverse. It seems as if many other people shared that dream as the parking lot was getting full when we left, after a very short morning.

We should have known better. There was a dark high overcast in Truckee that was more than the usual fog. The radar showed a broad sweep of high clouds streaming from the south, and no sign of clearing was on the radar. A quick read of the forecast discussion confirmed that suspicion. Yet we headed to Alpine anyways and hoped for the best.

Luckily, only the off piste terrain was in a corral like state. The groomers were surprisingly soft low on the mountain, and they were wide and smooth to boot. This was a good thing because the light was flatter than flat. We made a half dozen laps, discovering that yes indeed, groomers were much more solid up high. We vacated our close in parking space rather early today and made some late arriving tourist happy.

A new darkness also arrived at Alpine Meadows today. It was announced via the usual mass media sources that the mile long terrain park is now complete. Coincidently, it was also the first day that I noticed “Free Dance Floor” stickers appearing around Alpine. Both of these events have created a whole new storm of immature comments on Fakebook.

While the battle over Dance Floor continues, it appears that many have lost site of the bigger picture and that has more to do with whether or not we needed more park space and whether the level of investment in parks is going to impact operational costs too much, causing reductions later in the season. From my standpoint, there’s been entirely too much focus on how the parks overtake groomers. I really think that many people are more concerned about how parks over take other parts of the mountain. It occurred to me today that maybe the “Move Keyhole At Alpine Meadows” page on Fakebook is not tongue in cheek at all. Those people recognized that someone was going to put a terrain park in the way.

Today I took a ride down Terry’s Return to check out the new features. I actually quite like the hip feature and medium jump line that has been built there in the last few years. It’s been out of the way and fun to watch and has seen plenty of utilization in the spring. There always has been plenty of room to avoid it on the skiers right side of Terry’s Return, or by cutting off below Danger Cliffs.

But today, that was not possible. Features were built on the cutoff about a month ago. The new features on Terry’s Return have expanded to fill all of Terry’s Return. As I rounded the corner to return to Rock Garden, I was first met by fencing and then some park features, including the most useless feature ever, the sushi dish. In the entire last season, the only people to use the sushi dish were under the age of four, and they were sliding on their bellies.

With the new setup, all traffic from Pygmy Forest, Palisades, Keyhole and Lower Saddle have the choice of:

• Returning to Summit by going through the park – which they probably don’t want to do. And the park rats probably don’t want to dodge the freeheelers and freeskiers in the park either. It’s a safety risk to force people into the park.

• The other choice would be to traverse out to Deer Camp or High Yellow Gully. In today’s conditions, that would have been insanity. In normal conditions, it makes a return to ABC extremely difficult. Returning to Summit at that point puts high speed skiers on Hot Wheels and forces a lot more traffic onto the Low Gunners Traverse back to Summit. Yes, people do exactly that to catch High Yellow, but there is no sense in pushing all of that traffic through that area.

This is exactly the same issue I have with the current park location on Dance Floor. It’s not the groomer I miss. It’s the direct line from Roundhouse that I miss: Sympathy Ridge to Lower Sympathy then to Gunner’s Knob. It’s a perfect route for storm days when Summit is not running or when upper mountain conditions are not awesome. That line no longer exists as you must cross Charity at it’s narrowest point, where there is a ton of traffic…and then there’s the fence lines around the park….ugh.

Yes there is other nice off piste terrain at Alpine Meadows, but note that the park now blocks much of the north facing lines. Stating that Lakeview, Scott and Sherwood are all good alternatives is not correct as they are vastly different exposures, which are better at different times. It’s the diversity of exposures that make Alpine Meadows an amazing place. No other Tahoe mountain has so much diversity.

Some hipsters are probably calling me a dinosaur right now. Just remember, I was skiing my Hart Freestyles long before you were born, the genesis for this site was the Alpine Meadows Freestyle Team site, and we continue to support freestyle and freeride teams, skiers and riders. Now can we get a superpipe on Nick’s again?