100 Minutes

That was the length of the ski day for most people at Alpine Meadows. What a blissful 100 minutes it was…

I left the house with zero expectations, as the snow was absolute slop in my driveway. I was stoked to hit Alpine Meadows Road just as it reopened in the morning, only to get stopped for avalanche control for the parking lot. With somewhere around 15 inches of new snow overnight, and howling winds, there were a lot of booms this morning with bombs, the Gazex exploders and the avalauncher (I think that’s it) on the back of the truck.

Several people have asked about that new metal tower being built in the parking lot. On the right is the old green “gun tower” that was the former site for using artillery type devices to control the slopes over the parking lot. This photo makes it pretty clear that the string of ornaments hanging over the parking lot would now be right in the firing line. That necessitated the construction of the new tower on the left. Until that is complete, I’m guessing that Patrol will still be using the truck mounted Avalauncher. Since the parking lot needs to be at least part way clear for the truck to get around, there have been some delays in opening the parking lot.

Being in the early crowd, I was directed to the Subway lot instead of my usual spot at the beginning of Lot 3. Fortunately, I made a mental note of that for the afternoon departure. I was pleasantly surprised by the slow arrival of guests this morning and the lack of your typical powder day behaviors. Without Summit on the schedule, maybe people just didn’t bother, or they too assumed it would be glop.

Roundhouse spun right on time and as I watched those first skiers and boarders coming down Sympathy Face (aka Charity Face), I saw no signs of Sierra cement. People were making nice smooth pow turns without skiing backseat. I have no idea how it happened but the new snow skied fast and light. Crossing over other tracks was barely noticeable. We got three runs in on Roundhouse before the line started to get noticeably long. On the fourth run, we noted that the TLC line was much shorter. Typically I would have gone to the TLC line at that point. I did not. The skiing was good enough off of Roundhouse to warrant waiting 5-10 minutes in line today. If you know me, that is really an unusual stance for me.

On the sixth run, we noticed that setup was being done at Scott, and that brought great hope.

Coming down Tiegel on the seventh run, I noted that both Roundhouse and TLC were stopped and that is never a good sign. Then 5 snowmobiles came out from the lift maintenance building and we knew something was up. At least I wasn’t stuck on a lift this time. It’s happened to me a couple of times this week. No hot chocolate coupon. I heard today the 50% lift vouchers were given. Surprisingly, Sherwood kept running after the entire front side closed, as it has a different power source. A few lucky people got in an extra run or two over there before lightning shut the lift down.

We hung out for an extra couple of hours wishing and hoping to return to the slopes. There were several more power blips and quick outages. By about 1 pm it looked pretty clear that would not be happening. We noted patrol removing signage and I finally took off my ski boots. Apparently Subway, Meadow and the Big Carpet continued to run into the afternoon, but after you have had seven dreamy powder runs, that just won’t do.

So today was excellent…for 100 minutes. Here’s to hoping for a similar but longer day tomorrow. Theoretically there is a little break in the action tomorrow, but I am not counting on it. The storm builds again into Monday. Tuesday may clear before one last storm impulse moves in foe Wednesday and Thursday.