Entering The Home Stretch…

It was another fantastic weekend of spring skiing at Alpine Meadows. Even a strong northeast wind on Saturday failed to dampen our spirits. We have much to be thankful for, because only three ski areas remain open in Tahoe after today: Alpine Meadows, The Valley With No Name and Donner Ski Ranch. Everyone else had their final day today. What do these resorts have in common? They are all run by leaders that like skiing, and believe in running the resort until the snow is gone (or May 31st, when odds are, the snow will be minimal).

That said, the number of lifts available is rapidly dropping. Friday turned out to be the last day for Sherwood. I had the good fortune to take a couple of last runs on High Traverse on Friday. We had those few inches of snow last week, and then patrol gave the snow a couple of days to cook. Yeah, those were the best corn runs of the season on High Traverse. It’s not surprising that Sherwood did not make it to through the weekend. It was getting very difficult to get back to the return road, and seemed treacherous for getting a cat either to the bottom or top to smooth out ramps and loading areas.

Poor Andy missed out on that perfect High Traverse day, instead opting to do a wildflower and American River hike near Colfax. The 7.7 mile roundtrip hike is in the shade and downhill on the way to the river, but hot and uphill on the return trip. But the wildflowers did look beautiful.

Things were slow to defrost on Saturday, and Summit did spend the day on windhold. But we crammed in a whole lot of laps on Roundhouse, and then Scott. I took one long cold trip up ABC and it was super windy. I took the death traverse through the moguls and a wiggle to Sunspot. Unfortunately, it was frozen solid until the last two turns. The lower mountain skied great! How windy was it? Here’s Trevor and Bob being pushed uphill at the top of Wolverine (video by Marisa):

The winds were significantly less for Sunday, and that meant there were a few more people than Saturday. As always, it’s just a matter of knowing where to be and when. Our order roughly included: Sunspot, Wolverine, Ladies Slalom, Yellow, Ridge & Bobby’s.

If you like Scott…you had better get on it. Summer Road is rapidly deteriorating, as is Bobby’s. That leaves just Ridge as being really good right around the lunch hour. But Scott is not going to last much longer. I notice that Meadow is off the schedule for tomorrow as well.

This seems to be the last week of “normal” operations, with 5 lifts scheduled at Alpine. Reports are that after this week, it will be Summit lift only. Fortunately, Summit is a great lift that still serves a ton of terrain on the front side of the mountain…ski it while you can!