Two Fer Twosday

Twice The Snow, Twice The Fun…Twice The People

Depending on exactly where you measured it and which forecaster you believed, twice as much snow fell overnight and yesterday as was forecasted. That lead to twice as much as much fun today, 2-22-22, as there was some very nice and light dry powder. In some areas it skied like 8 inches, while favored spots skied like 18 inches. There was also seemingly twice as many people at Alpine Meadows today. That’s probably not likely, but the upper lots did fill as well as most of Deer Park. The White Wolf lot was not used, but the shuttle busses from the other side kept arriving.

The entire mountain opened at 9am. Everything. Well done patrollers and mountain ops staff.

That meant the lines were pretty long at times during the first couple of hours. Then the lift lines were gone, but so were the clean powder lines. In these days of cheap multi-resort passes, and being ski-skate week for many, there is no longer such a thing as a powder day. We’re down to a powder hour, unless you’re willing to make a hike or really know where to hunt down a few extra turns.

So what was skiing good today? Pretty much everything, with one significant exception. If it previously had large moguls, especially the firm kind, one foot of new light powder is not enough to reset that. We saw people definitely on the struggle bus on Sherwood Face, South Face and Scott Chute this morning. They were not having a good day.

Virtually everywhere else was really a lot of fun. Even the cut up powder skied well as it was so light. Early on it was a rush to get the low hanging fruit, leading us to hot lapping a few previously groomed runs, then covered in the new powder. We then headed for Scott to seek out some of the best fruit. Frankly, I was a bit worried about what those 120mph overnight winds did in the less protected zones off of Summit. The first lap into Gentian Gully was nirvana, and the second lap was great too. That said, I have never seen that many people in that zone at one time…pent up demand.

Later in the day, I headed to Sherwood and sought out some of those lesser known powder zones. Even those got hit pretty hard today. It wasn’t really a “free refills” sort of day, even though it snowed hard at times. It could not snow hard enough to keep up with the skier traffic.

We should get a few more inches of snow tonight into tomorrow morning before this storm cycle is over. Unfortunately it looks like this is a “one and done storm”. The models have taken a turn for the worse, bringing back ridging sooner and stronger than expected. Had I written yesterday’s report, I would have mentioned another storm possible mid-week next week. I reviewed the GFS, Euro and Canadian models this afternoon and that idea seems to have evaporated. Update: The evening run of the Canadian model holds out hope for Monday again. It does look like we hold onto cold temperatures through Friday. That will preserve the winter snow experience. As of now, temperatures warm into the upper 30’s over the weekend, bringing the potential for sticky manky conditions before we get back to spring snow. It bears watching.

Two Blogs

We’ve mentioned a couple of times recently that the “official” operations blog at the PT website has done a pretty good job of talking about mountain operations. It seems that went to their heads. I noticed last week that there are now “conditions” blog posts being done at the PT website, and last week, three in a row were specific to Alpine Meadows. Interesting. It was Oscar Wilde that said “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.”

These blog posts are not an entirely new thing. The authors, Claire Weiss and James Yim, are both good writers. They offer nice commentary and some great photos. Both writers have written extensively for Snowbrains.com, and Snowbrains has always had a very cozy relationship with the marketing department.

I’ve always gone with the idea that more information is better, so feel free to read them if you like. My feelings won’t be hurt. Between Andy and myself, we have more than 100 years of experience skiing at Alpine Meadows, as well as many ski friends that spent their lives working at the mountain. It gives us an inside edge, that we sometimes share with you.

Should I be offended that I was not asked to write official blog posts? Well, the marketing department knows that is probably a bad idea. Because we don’t have a completely cozy relationship with the marketing department, we’re free to say what we want:

• We support the recognition of Alpine Meadows as it’s own brand, with its own name, logo and ethos.

• We’re free to say that purposefully combining two resorts into one, just so you can claim “Sixth largest resort in North America” is inane. It sounds so much better to say we have two resorts to choose from in Tahoe, and each provides a different experience.

• We’re free to say things like the Base to Base Gondola is a dumb idea and an entire waste of huge amounts of money

• We’re free to say that any further expansion of the village over in Olympic Valley is a bad idea, and instead Alterra should be looking for a third resort in the Tahoe area.

So no, I would not sell out and become the official blogger of this mountain. True fact, since restarting this site in 2019, I have not accepted a single paid advertisement. The few stickers we do sell, they get sold at a loss. This site is truly a labor of love. There’s a whole lot of you that enjoy this Alpine Meadows community we have built. Thank you for being a part of it.