Reading some recent articles this week, you would think that with gasoline running at $6 to $7 a gallon in California, tourism and pleasure travel was doomed for the foreseeable future. As it turned out, that is not the case when it comes to people that like to ski and ride at Alpine Meadows. Although the parking lots did not fill completely, the upper lots were full by about 9:30 and a good crowd of people were on the mountain today.
Just checking the math, it probably makes sense. Taking a trip from Cupertino to Alpine Meadows, as an example, it is about 240 miles one way, or 480 miles round trip. Assuming you’re driving a car that averages 20 mpg, that’s about 24 gallons of gas. With a prices rising about $ 2.50 a gallon in recent weeks, that’s only about $60 more for a ski weekend…or about the cost of two burgers and a couple of beverages at the ski resort.
This is good news for businesses that rely on tourism. People are still coming to Tahoe. It’s still bad news if you’re driving an RV or something that gets terrible mileage.
So the skiing today was super spring like. There was just a bit of chill at Summit early on, but lower on the mountain it was almost t-shirt weather when lifts rolled at 9am. Our frontside “Sherwood test runs” were already soft on our first run, and we headed there on our third lap. The main Sherwood groomer gets narrower by the day and it was pretty busy. But that was not the reason to be at Sherwood. There was perfectly ripe corn for the taking on Sherwood Face, Sherwood Right Face and Chute Zero. There was a line of hikers crossing over the rock bands to the far reaches of South Face. That seemed pointless when the closer in areas were so good and not busy.
“I just saw your wife. We probably should not let her see us here together!” – Quote of the day, overheard on someone’s Motorola radio at Sherwood this morning
The longest lines of the day seemed to be at Lakeview. I like Outer Limits and Jorg’s…but not that much. So we moved on to Scott. No line at Scott, plus Ridge and Bobby’s were fantastic corn. The only problem was the “fast lane” return to Scott, that section wedged in between East Creek and the family ski zone. There was a frightening mix of super slow and super fast skiers and riders in that area. I like to avoid that as much as possible.
Conditions tomorrow will not be the same. There is a slight chance of some new snow. There is a very good chance of very high winds and cooler temperatures. A lot will depend on how quickly the clouds get out of the picture. On Thursday, the were gone by the time the lifts opened, and it was all good. Hopefully Summit will not end up on wind hold tomorrow.
For Tuesday, that storm may not be exactly what skiers want. It’s again showing one to two inches of potential moisture by Wednesday. The cold air support is not there. As of today, most snow will fall above 7000 feet, with only about 4-6 inches falling as snow at resort levels. A stronger storm is in the cards for next weekend, but the models are flipping back and forth with each run so it’s tough to say. It has potential to maybe possibly be the biggest storm we have seen in 2022 so far…or it could flop, which has happened more frequently over the last two very dry months.
Still, thanks to a banger December, we are still skiing.
Happy Birthday Andy!
Andy Wertheim, the other writer for the Unofficial Alpine ski blog, celebrates his 74th birthday today. It was my pleasure to spend the morning skiing with him. Here he is leading the way into the almost done Chute Zero at Sherwood.
