Iconic

Some people may have used the term “epic” for today, but I won’t because of it’s association with Vail Resorts. I could have used the word “Ikonic” instead of “iconic”, but that is definitely not on brand for me.  So why was it an iconic morning? Because it was a fantastic midweek powder day with very few people on the mountain, at least until the afternoon. It’s those sort of days that brought me to love Alpine Meadows so many years ago.

It may have been all of that clear powder yesterday that scared people away. Most of my ski posse did not show up today, except for Andrew. Andrew was smart. Sure some of the snow that fell overnight was a little bit dense, and it appeared that maybe TLC might be the top of the mountain again. But the snow that fell this morning was coming down at a fast and furious pace and Roundhouse opened right on schedule.

I may have lost track of how many locations we picked up first tracks today. Even where it wasn’t first tracks, it was still putting a happy on my face. The wind kept redistributing the snow and covering our old tracks. There were times it snowed so hard today, you could not see the lodge from the top of the Tiegel park.

We finally called it a day after what people claimed was a twenty minute stop on TLC, one of those ones where they try to restart it 5 or 6 times and it stops again immediately. We were chilled to the bone. Sadly no hot chocolate coupon was offered. It’s probably for the better. My son was at home handling the interior painting on the ADU project. I promised him I would handle all of the snow removal today when we got home. I hate painting.

I got this tweet this morning:

It got me thinking about how many days it has snowed. Out of the last month, there have been 14 days with a measurable amount of snowfall. Sadly the snowfall tracker page does not indicate totals at the upper mountain for Alpine Meadows anymore. But for Palisades, it says we have seen 280 inches of cumulative snowfall this season so far. Last season we saw 310 cumulative inches at Alpine Meadows by the end of April. We are on a pretty good pace here. I am hoping that should we even get a reasonable amount of snow the rest of this season, we will see skiing at Alpine Meadows until Memorial Day. You know that somewhere in some office, someone is already inventing an excuse for closing the mountain early this spring.

More snow is on the way. Originally, Wednesday looked like a day where we could see a break. Now it looks like the snow will continue into Wednesday. Thursday is now the drier, and warmer day. Warmer meaning a high of 39 is showing for Alpine Meadows. Not ideal but hopefully we won’t see the next system moving in for Thursday night into the weekend as rain. Snow levels should go back down Friday. Snow continues possibly all of the way to next Wednesday. Travel for the MLK weekend is going to be a huge mess. You can quote me on that.

After Wednesday, the models seem to be giving us a break from storms. For how long? Nobody is sure yet. Hopefully we dont see a three month dry slot like we saw last season. even if we do, I’ll still be skiing just about every day.