The Season Resumes Next Door…Kind Of

After a false start in late October, the ski season will resume at Olympic Valley beginning Friday. Don’t get your hopes too high just yet. For Friday, November 26th, it will just be the beginner magic carpets at the base area. For Saturday, the SnoVentures lift will open with limited terrain.

How is this possible and why isn’t there skiing at Alpine Meadows? It’s a simple matter of elevation. The base area at Olympic Valley is 600 feet lower than Alpine Meadows, and it’s located at the bottom of a valley. Cold air sinks. For a reference point, my house in Truckee was 13° last night, while Alpine Meadows was a balmy 31° at mid-mountain. Snow was made in abundance at Alpine the previous night, but it was difficult to see much, if any, snow-making activity on the webcam early this morning. I would not expect much more progress in the near future either.

If the SnoVentures lift is not your jam, then consider that Boreal will also open on Friday, spinning their Castle Peak lift. For those unfamiliar with Boreal, that is the lower lift serving mainly the terrain park. In prior years, it has been so busy that it was more efficient to walk up than ride the lift up. Then skiing down was about the same speed at walking up, due to the dodge’em factor. I’m not that anxious to ski yet.

I’m hoping that Mount Rose might have something more to offer soon.. While they have also suffered from the inversion, they did receive more snow than rain in recent storms due to their higher base elevation. My fingers are crossed.

In the weather department, things are beginning to look up, just maybe not as fast as we would like. Instead of seeing a big doughnut hole of dryness over the western US on the models, storms are beginning to appear within the 10 day window. Within 10 days we are talking about the “realm of possibility” rather than “Fantasyland”. The caveat, and it’s considerable, it that only the GFS is seeing the trend. The other models have not jumped on the hype train just yet. It’s worth watching.

We just returned from a camping trip to tempt the weather gods. It wasn’t enough, so we just scheduled another camping trip. I have never camped in December before. Eventually, there will be enough snow for good skiing, hopefully sooner rather than later. Time to go check on the turkey in the oven…Happy Thanksgiving to all.