Little Things

It was another fantastic day at Alpine Meadows, with very spring-like conditions on many areas of the mountain. Meteorological spring is still 30 days away, but temperatures at Alpine Meadows reached 54° at mid-slope this afternoon. That lead to some perfect corn conditions around the mountain, some softening of off piste terrain and some actual stickiness due to the saturated snow.

As today started off fairly crowded, with Alpine Meadows lots filling again, we spent most of the morning avoiding traffic and seeking out those little bits of fun scattered around the mountain. As an example, Solar Flare was groomed, just skier’s left of Sunspot, for the first time this season. It provided about six turns of perfectly creamy corduroy fairly early in the day. We also found a few soft corny turns off God’s Knob and in Chicken Leg, welcoming the chance to avoid the more crowded groomed slopes. Enjoy the little things.

As the afternoon rolled around, we again turned our attention to Scott, after noting much longer lines reported at Lakeview and Sherwood via the app. Ridge and Bobby’s always deliver, as long as you wait for the right time of day, and patiently wait for your opening. The upper end of Standard is just about burnt out, but provides some fun adventure lines. On the lower end, there’s about 6 great corn turns before you have to power slide through the shady section.

There’s still complete dryness in the next 16 days of the model runs. The skiing tomorrow will be slightly cooler with a little bit of southwest wind and temps coming up to about 40°. Then the big north wind and chill event is still on for Tuesday through Thursday, with temperatures now looking at the high 20’s. Yikes. Things rebound to springlike by Friday.

Little Things

There was a smile on our face today as we headed up Alpine Meadows Road. We noted a couple of weeks ago that the electronic message sign said “Welcome to Palisades Tahoe” rather than “Welcome to Alpine Meadows”. That presents a confusing message to visitors and was an affront to those of us that love Alpine Meadows, and those that live in the community of Alpine Meadows. I met up for a little ski date with Palisades Tahoe COO Dee Byrne, and some other staff, to talk about how things were going. The sign was one of the topics of discussion. Ms. Byrne agreed that it needed to be changed. Through the week there was some miscommunication and an error in programming. But this morning we noted that the sign now says “Welcome To Alpine Meadows.” It’s a little thing that makes a difference to many of us.

Also of note, Ms. Byrne had spoke of her efforts to have complete transparency with reporting on mountain operations. We have noted here before that the “official” mountain ops blog has been great this season, when it get’s published. This weekend, the tweets were very forthcoming in noting that conditions are currently firm and that groomers may be our best bet, especially in the morning. This is a really a refreshing change from previous seasons. It’s another little thing to appreciate about our home mountain, and our neighbor to the north.

The Niners just scored…it’s time to pay attention to this game I rarely watch…see you out there tomorrow.