The pressure was on in some office over the hill at Palisades. Mount Rose, Boreal, Dodge Ridge and Donner Ski Ranch have all announced plans to begin their season on Friday, November 11th. There truly has been a lot of snowfall at the upper elevations, with Palisades reporting a cumulative snowfall of 39 inches at the 8000′ elevation. Today, they announced that they too would open earlier, albeit a week later than the aforementioned mountains and only 4 days earlier than originally scheduled.
Update: Northstar just announced an early opening for 11/12 and I have heard similar rumblings about Heavenly. More pressure…
Operations at Palisades Tahoe will begin on Friday, November 18th. Operations will be somewhat limited, as of now only SnoVentures and Gold Coast will be open for skiing and riding. The Funitel will operate only to give access to the upper mountain. Mountain Run will not be open. According to the official ops blog, only the main Gold Coast Run will be available, probably without park features. So it’s going to be a fairly minimal ski experience to say the least. It takes a lot of staff to open Palisades even a little bit.
Consider this…the hype train about this storm has been running strong for the last 10 days or so with prominent weather bloggers and television weather personalities all showing pictures of intensive Tahoe snowfall. Even my grandmother has heard the news, and she’s been underground for about 20 years. Also consider that the best guesses are that there are somewhere around 80K Ikon pass holders that live within day trip distance of Palisades. These are people that have most likely not gone skiing since April or May. I’ll let you do the math in estimating crowd sizes and wait times. I am almost certain I will skip it myself.
Too little, too late? You tell me. Alpine? They were still plowing snow away from the base this morning…eventually we will be skiing at Alpine and it will be better than those years that they made us wait into December.
It’s only been 20 years since Grandma Shirley’s been gone? It seems longer…
There was a time when there was healthy competition between Alpine and Sq***. They would have been in a race to see who could open first with the most terrain. Now they don’t have to give a —-!
Spot on!
Any idea when they release the new trail maps with the gondola (not the mention the new Red Dog chair)?
No idea. Does it matter? The gondola opens zero new terrain. Rad Dog will serve the same terrain as before, just faster.
Definitely doesn’t matter. It’s more of a branding exercise by Alterra and I’m curious how they show people you can go from the Alpine end to the lodge on a clear path.
Base to base gondola why? No new terrain access, and can’t even ski Troy Caldwell’s property down to schrAlpine from the back of KT like we used to poach way back in the day.
Oh my bad, AMC, Already More Crowded can now claim its the 3rd largest ski area in N.A., only the 3rd tho?
And hey hows that base village development project appeal by Alterra? DENIED!!
Later kooks bwahahahah
What’s in the box? Wjat’s in the box? ……. Marketing Material and that is it.