Summit Mania

If you really were hoping to catch some powder off of Summit this morning, you had to get there early. You also had to be willing to wait in line. Due to staggered openings at Alpine Meadows and Olympic Valley, Summit opened today at Alpine Meadows and no new terrain was opened over the hill. I knew exactly what would happen. Many many people came to Alpine Meadows today. So many that the Alpine Meadows parking lots were full by 9:12am.

What I can say is that if you had the right game plan and mental state, it all worked out fine. There are plenty of storms in the pipeline and many more opportunities to grab some powder skiing. I chose to just enjoy whatever Roundhouse and Hotter Wheels had to offer today. Since the lines were pretty big at Summit for most of the morning, there were essentially no lines for either Roundhouse or TLC. We skied groomers and soft off piste snow all morning, without the hustle and bustle of rushing to catch the last lines of fresh snow. It was a fantastic day. I finally took a couple of laps on Summit around 1:15 pm just to do some sight seeing.

The coverage on the mountain is really great for this time of the year. It’s not perfect. There are still rocks to be found if you knew where to find them. The problem was really for those people that don’t know those rockier parts of the mountain. I hit a few yesterday in Expert’s Shortcut, which is a known minefield. I spotted the usual hazards along Fall Line on Yellow and Tower 19 off of Summit. Since I was sporting some new sticks today, I was a bit more vigilant about keeping my eyes open.

Tomorrow, most of the upper mountain at Olympic Valley opens, and that will take a ton of pressure off of Alpine Meadows. Scott chair will also be added to the schedule at Alpine, increasing options for intermediate and advanced skiers. I am surprised that Meadow is not being added just yet. Still, there’s an entire new hatch of mosquitos that hatched today and they will be arriving to all mountain resorts tomorrow, making just about everywhere buzzy, if you know what I mean. This is no surprise. You just have to be proactive in countermeasures for crowds and be happy that cheaper passes do make skiing and riding a little bit less exclusive.

The weather is going to be relatively nice over the next few days. Saturday should be similar to today, with temperatures just above freezing and sunny skies. Sunday will be the same but the wind will bring a bit more of a chill to the situation. The next system begins to move in overnight Monday, and after that, it looks like snow just about every day. Looking at the most recent run of the GFS, there’s about 6-8 inches of precipitation possible just by Christmas Day. That translates into another round of snow similar to last week. Snow levels are not certain yet.

During the second week of the model run, between Christmas and the New Year, the models go cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. The last several model runs hint at up to 20 inches of precipitation by the new year. Looking at the 8 Station Index for Northern California, precipitation totals are currently tied with 1982-83 for being the second wettest year. That’s not counting the current model runs.

None of this is certain. The dipole weather setup that seems to be our new reality for the last 5 years or so is currently in our favor. While the Western US is currently under the influence of a stubborn trough that brings these storms, the Eastern US is under a large ridge that is keeping dry and warm. We were there just a few short weeks ago. We could flip back to that situation at any time.