The terrain available at Alpine Meadows expanded again today. As we suggested, and later the Ops Blog suggested, Sherwood did open today. Not only did Sherwood open, High Traverse also opened. Sadly it was not quite the day that some people had hoped for. Yesterday was the warmest day that we have had in quite a while, and combined with the sun, things got a bit cooked. It was not all bad, it was variable. One minute you might find some snow that skied like powder, and then after a slight variation in pitch or aspect, you suddenly were trying to turn in a fairly solid sun crust.
There was still some great snow to be found. The farther you went out toward Grouse, the sun had less affect on the snow. I did not hike that far out. But Andy and I did find a few turns here and there of hip deep powder that brought big smiles. One thing to note about the Sherwood area is that Ray’s Rut is not groomed just yet, and that seemed to surprise some people today. I saw some bewildered looks at the bottom of Powerline this morning.
We also ventured over to Scott today, as neither of us had been to Gentian Gully since it opened yesterday. The ship has sailed there. There’s some monster sized moguls at the entrance, and then as people spread out, things are not well skied in. With snow falling out of the trees, the consistency was somewhat of “Chunky Monkey”.
Temperatures were slightly warmer today than yesterday. So we’re pretty much out of the powder cycle with the exception of a few lightly traveled north facing pitches. Off piste snow that has not been well skier packed is not really as pleasant. Where things are better skied in, it was much more fun. In particular our group really enjoyed the small bumps on Yellow today.
Grooming has been pretty limited over the last week, with powder being the name of the game. The grooming hours have also been dedicated to opening new terrain. Hopefully more terrain will be groomed over the next few days, as that is largely where most folk want to be in the next week or so.
The weather forecast is anything but stable. Yesterday’s models were starting to double down on the idea of another storm cycle as early as the end of next week. Today, they were pretending like they never said such a thing. So enjoy skiing, or don’t. We’ll keep an eye out for the next refresh.
This is the first of two posts today…next one coming in less than one hour.