Every Turn Was Different

The term “variable conditions” is over-used. Today’s conditions were “extremely variable”. Every turn was different. One turn could having you saying “Yewww!” and two turns later you would shout “What the…”. Take that same run 15 minutes later, and the results would be entirely different. If you are a strong skier and making aggressive hop turns, today was excellent. Ditto for you snowboarders. At the other end of the spectrum, many people were on the struggle bus.

What was the cause of all of that variability? It rained over night all of the way to the top of Summit. Also that big ball of fire in the sky made a rare appearance today, causing temperatures to rise to the mid-40’s this afternoon. Ultimately this was a better solution for many people than the rain yesterday.

One thing that happens in conditions like this is Insta-Corn. That bit of rain we had rounded out the ice crystals, and then the overnight freeze happened slowly, resulting in larger crystals. For the most part, the snow skied like spring corn today, in particular on the groomed surfaces. There wasn’t much of that sticky feeling you expect after a rainy day. Even where it wasn’t groomed, the new fallen snow had converted to corn-like crystals, except that there was no consolidation. It wasn’t your typical heavy pow feeling. Turning was possible as long as you committed to speed and were good at unweighting your skis. You can click on each picture in the gallery to see a larger view.

My first Summit ride in a week…

Sherwood Face…so fat!

Deep corn on Sunspot

Not so bueño

Idiots looking like a blue square

Did it rain or something?

There was not much grooming done overnight and I heard a lot of grumbles about that today. I’ll give Mountain Ops a pass on that because it is really difficult to groom a Slurpee. I saw a lot of places where it seemed like a cat had gotten stuck while grooming last night. Hopefully we will see a lot more grooming tonight, because anything that refreezes tonight will be somewhere between terrible and awful if it doesn’t get groomed. Tomorrow, more cold weather and clouds move in, but only 1-3 inches of snow is expected during the day. It’s not going to cover much chunder.

For me the groomers were where it was at today…ripping fast carvable snow. My favorite was Charity around 1pm. Perfection. Speaking of Charity…

I spent a large part of the day searching for the elusive “Charity Face” and the “snow dunes of Yellow” that were mentioned by the last conditions blog over at the PT website. I know, Andy and I can be somewhat esoteric in our reports about the locations of certain areas of the mountain. We try to keep some things a secret around here. But I don’t think that was the case for the “official blog of Palisades Tahoe”. I know it’s tough to compete with what we do here at Unofficial Alpine. Together, Andy and myself have about 100 years of experience on this mountain. Between the two of us, we have written somewhere around 4500 conditions reports over the years. It will take awhile for the newbies to catch up. Snow dunes…

Oh Man, The Storm Is Coming

Actually it’s already arriving. There was a solid stream of cars coming in to Truckee this afternoon, and families were slowly pushing carts around Safeway deciding how many of gallons of ice cream they needed to get through Tuesday. Sadly, the pass blackout period during Christmas offered no relief this year, and I am guessing that we could be equally swamped for the MLK Weekend, which appeared to start today.

The snow arrives by tomorrow mid-day. Then it just keeps going and going until Monday night. The good news is that there is no expectation for absolute dumpage during any one period. It looks more like a steady consistent snow bringing about a foot or more each day. Winds will likely be a problem over the next 4 days. It’s a guarantee that some upper lifts will close at times…hopefully not the whole upper mountain over at the other place. It gets ugly at Alpine Meadows when that happens. The good news is that those shiny new boxes will likely just be a “string of ornaments” draped over the parking lot for much of the weekend. Hey, I believe that today may have been the first day ever that the B2B ran all day without a wind hold or mechanical hold.

The pattern starts changing mid-next week and we may see an inside slider or outside slider around Wednesday, depending on exactly where the ridge sets up. After that the 8-14 day is looking drier.