Blue Skies & Cold Snow

I’m pretty sure that today was the busiest day we have seen at Alpine Meadows in the last week. Blue skies and cold winter snow have a way of bringing out more people. It was a nice change from yesterday, when the cloud deck lowered over the mountain, creating foggy conditions and foggy goggles.

Ninety five percent of everything we skied today was really great. The best skiing was mostly off piste terrain. You pretty much couldn’t go wrong just about anywhere from South Peril to Lower Palisades in the Alpine Bowl area, as long as you were mindful of various rock bands. You could say the same about all aspects of Wolverine Bowl, and most of the terrain off of Yellow chair. Pick a line that had the size of bumps you enjoy, put a smile on your face and then ski or ride…because we can.

What about the 5 percent? The groomed terrain starts off awesome in the morning but gets scraped off rather quickly. Since many of us are skiing on rock skis, that have hit a lot of rocks over the last 36 days, we’re skiing with poor edges. All of Werners and the steeper sections of Dance Floor and Weasel will get your attention if you’ve got dull edges or are not sure how to ski in east coast conditions.

I do enjoy an adventure line and I noted that patrol had opened access to Winter Road off of Scott. It’s definitely not a road yet. It’s not much of a traverse either. It’s easy to get sucked in, as the first 50 yards doesn’t look so bad. But the closer you got to Mountain View, the mix became 75% brush and 25% snow. Mountain View itself is a lot of fun but has gotten a lot more spicy since Scott chair opened. If you like adventure, go for it. Do patrol a favor and don’t go farther than the established boundary lines.

I had really hoped to get more laps in on Summit today, but that did not happen. On the last really busy day we had, on Sunday the 20th, I reported on the excellent job being done to make sure that social distancing was happening in and around the Summit corral. That just was not happening today, and that meant that things got uncomfortably crowded. So I bailed out and did more Roundhouse and Yellow laps instead.

I’m giving my permission for all Alpine Meadows managers to print out the Summit maze diagram from December 20th, along with the descriptive text to use in training the teams that assist with crowd control at Summit. It will make it far easier for all of us, guests and staff, to stay healthy and keep this season going. Then again, all of us need to do our part by being a little bit more patient and not crowding into the corral.

What About the Weather?

The next round of snow is expected to move in tomorrow evening. The front moves through very quickly and is only expected to bring 3 or 4 inches of snow. This will not be enough to open new terrain yet, but it will be a nice little refresh to soften up the surface again. The storm should be done by the time lifts roll Thursday morning.

After that, things start to get interesting. Another weak wave may happen on Saturday. But all eyes are turning to next week. Currently the models are showing that we could get into a solid pattern of zonal flow. Just using the last GFS run as an example, it’s showing the potential for 5 to 6 inches of water from a series of systems over next week. The GFS is one of the drier models for the event. It could be a game changer that will get the entire mountain open. Notice the “could be”, not “will be.” I would not bet the farm on that forecast just yet. It’s just the closest we have seen yet to typical Sierra storms.

It’s far too early to tell the timing of these systems yet. More importantly, it’s tough to predict where the snow levels may fall. Looking at the model run above, the cold low stays pretty far north. It’s a developing situation that could turn out great for ski conditions, or it could be a bit wetter. Stay tuned.