Brisk But Good

What a great day to end the two week holiday period. It was the first day that 100% of the terrain was open at Alpine Meadows, as well as all major lifts being open. Most travelers were already on their way home and most of the slopes were empty. There were several points I had to stop and enjoy the beauty, marveling at our ability ride up the mountain on a flying chair, and then slide down on skis.

It was definitely brisk. The day began with Summit temperatures around 19° with 60 mph winds from the southwest. That’s a wind chill of -7°F. Big plumes of snow were blowing off the ridges, offering a free dermabrasion treatment as you exited Summit.

Today was a “follow the snow” day. Doing a quick locker room survey this afternoon, most people agreed that the D Chutes were the “run of the day” for most of us. My turns in D7 were ultra sweet and you could keep following that blown in snow down to the lower part of D8, the apron of North Peril and finally onto Werners.

With all of the road building and ramp building now mostly complete, more time is now available for grooming more runs. Most notable today was the grooming of Wolverine Bowl for the first time this season. It’s a good thing too, as there was quite a headwall forming at the top of the run. I am so used to seeing that big lump in the middle of Wolverine during the early season, the one that doubles as a nordic jump. I was surprised to see no sign of that lump today.

Since I skipped Sherwood yesterday, we headed on over for a tour this morning. The coverage over there is phenomenal. Just as I expected, I had no trouble finding some bits of powder heaven leftovers. I was not on powder skis today, so fortunately it was still light and fluffy. We should have skipped the tour at Lakeview today.

Instead, we were lured into some relatively fresh powder turns left of Reilly’s Run and found ourselves looking at one of the larger lines I have ever seen at Lakeview. We should have been smart and taken Ray’s Rut back to Sherwood. Instead we joined the line, noting that Lakeview was not running at full speed. Most of the runs around Lakeview were already pretty trashed as patrol allowed hiking access yesterday. It was too windy at the top to enjoy the view of the lake.

We noticed that a singles line was set up at Hotter wheels this morning, which helps chairs go up full.  Yay! Several readers have mentioned that in our comments lately. There was no singles line at Lakeview today. In our 15 minutes of waiting, it seemed like more than half of the chairs went with only two instead of three riders. In very rough terms, a singles line could have bumped uphill capacity by around 15%. That said, there probably won’t be such a large line again at Lakeview until the next time it has been closed for several days.

Wind, A Bit Of Snow, and Hopefully Not Rain

The storm that forecasters have been talking about arriving this week appears to be heading more to our north, just barely brushing the Tahoe area. What originally looked like it could be 2-3 feet of new snow has now been downgraded to the possibility of 4-10 inches. Hopefully that will mostly fall as snow. As the storm ends, snow levels could rise above base area levels. I would rather see no snow at all rather than rain on snow! Here’s the shorter range NAM model from the afternoon run:

Here’s the forecast of snow levels from NOAA:

The following storm on Friday also seems to be falling apart as well. I would not pin any hopes for new powder for next weekend. The storm we are likely to see is the storm of skiers with Base passes that have been blacked out for the last 8 day period, that will also be blacked out for the following Martin Luther King weekend.

Winds are pretty likely to affect operations for the next few days. Winds are forecast to reach over 100 mph on the Sierra ridges, and that will likely affect Summit, Scott and Lakeview, if not more. If you’re planning on skiing mid-week, pay attention to the PT app or Twitterverse. See you out there.