There were fewer people at Alpine Meadows today than last weekend. Although the parking lots were full, the entire mountain was open, and a good number of people were hanging out at Kangaroo for a race. With the exception of Summit and Sherwood, most lift lines were entirely acceptable all day. The real crowds were on the Sun Deck and at The Chalet.
More runs were groomed than any previous night and those early morning turns on corduroy were oh so good, for those that arrived early. We noted additional grooming on Terry’s Return, Twilight Zone and the rarely groomed Sweet Spot (just left of Sun Spot). Yellow has also been groomed over the last three days, erasing two months worth of icy moguls.
North facing slopes on the upper mountain continue to ski like winter snow. I’m not very tolerant of the line at Summit this year, which remains long due to chairs not being fully loaded. But the ABC chair does offer a shorter line, in trade for a shorter run. So I only did one run to the top of the mountain today and couldn’t tell you much more about that.
We spun a quick lap over to Sherwood this morning hoping to get ahead of the crowd. There’s some days where you can time it just right, you get there just when the snow is perfect, but before the line gets too long. Today was not that day. You want to be there when the blue line is higher than the red line.
The corn harvest is near. We did some laps off Scott on Ridge and Bobby’s mid-day and found both of those to be on the verge of excellent. Almost all of the clumps are gone, leaving the snow creamy and fast without being sticky. Timing is everything. Off of Lakeview, things are a day or two behind. All of the groomed runs exhibited quite a bit of clumping as well as a lot of stickiness. I didn’t really get much of a chance to evaluate Sherwood due to the long line.
Theoretically, things will be a little less busy tomorrow, as that is usually the case for Sundays. Because of some football thing going on in the afternoon, I imagine more people might stay home to prep for the big game. Thank you for that.
Monday looks to be our last spring-like day as some of the models are trying to bring some precipitation as early as Tuesday afternoon. The GFS is showing at least 3 waves of weather, with none looking as strong as the last series of systems. The last runs I have seen show the potential of around a foot of snow for each round. Snow levels would also trend a bit higher as there is not a deep low associated with this series yet.
Thanks to all of the Alpine Meadows staff for making it all work!