Putting The Meadow In Alpine Meadows

It’s 2:00 pm and I just got the tweet that TLC finally opened today. Unfortunately, I was already at Alpine Meadows once this morning and put in 5 laps on the Meadow chair. One friend claimed it was the “best day ever…on Meadow”. But Andy already reported on that day last week in this post, a day where it was the deepest powder day I have ever skied on Meadow. The weather seemed to be much like the last two days, at least when it came to new snowfall and winds, so I wholly expected that we would see TLC, and possibly Roundhouse, again today.

I can’t make any judgements about why it took longer to get TLC spinning today. While I can look at the Remote Data site and get a glimpse of wind speeds, that doesn’t tell the whole story. I do know that when I returned to my truck after skiing today, there was a gust of wind that nearly made it impossible to even open the door. It’s those sorts of gusts that give nightmares to mountain operations people. I was hoping that maybe they just decided to give some staff a well deserved break today while skier traffic was light. That’s why I was surprised to see TLC open at 1:40-ish.

At any rate, it’s not my mountain, so I don’t get to choose what happens. I’ve learned that complaining doesn’t really help. I’m grateful to not be shoveling snow or stuck behind a desk.

Yes, I could have lugged my gear from my locker up up to the deck, around the lodge, and down the steps to the car and driven over to Palisades, so I could ski KT22 in the rain (lower elevation). Then I would have to repeat the process in reverse to come back to Alpine. I had some things to do today, including spending at least an hour talking to someone halfway around the globe about cancelling my cable TV service. Isn’t that better than skiing?

Fun fact! It feels like I have skied Meadow a lot this season. Since I am pretty good at tracking my seasons through the Palisades app, I was able to look back at the last 5 seasons. It made me laugh:

• 22-23 season: 32 rides
• 21-22 season: 2 rides
• 20-21 season: 4 rides
• 19-20 season: 2 rides
• 18-19 season: 0 rides

There’s a couple of conclusions to be drawn here. For one, you could say that my skiing is getting worse. I might agree with you…past my peak. The stronger conclusion is that you have to take the good with the bad. This is definitely the stormiest season of those 5 years, and with the good days, come the windhold days.

After 5 runs, several of us sat around the locker room and waited to see if any thing was changing with the wind. One of my ski buddies, Bob, worked at Alpine Meadows for much of his adult life (maybe I should say “adult-ish” life). He brought in a slew of memorabilia to share today: old employee passes, some buttons and some name tags. Here’s the photos:

Now that you seen a lot of pictures of Bob, you’ll recognize him at Alpine Meadows. He loves to talk about everything Alpine Meadows.

Tomorrow And Beyond

Tomorrow is supposed to be heavy snow and then rain/snow. Snow levels start the day around 7000 feet and possibly higher before starting to fall in the afternoon. The winds are also supposed to really kick up during the day as well. I am not expecting much for tomorrow…it might be a Big Carpet day…if that. Any snow that does fall is going to be very heavy. Maybe I will get a chance to boost my Meadow tally!

Update: Indeed, closed for tomorrow Tuesday

Wednesday could be decent if snow levels do indeed drop as forecast. As of now, it looks like 4000 feet is the number. We might even see some sunny skies Wednesday and Thursday. I have forgotten what that looks like. Looking at the teleconnections, the PNA index turns briefly positive for the weekend before another trough moves in next week. The MJO forecast shows that wet connection dying off to almost nothing by next week. The result is that any storms next week will theoretically not have a tropical connection, bringing more snow and less rain.

For those not in the area, continuous snow has caused a lot of problems. In South Lake Tahoe, both a Raleys and a Safeway were closed due to collapsed roofs. In Tahoe City, an ATT building collapsed, as well as the entryway into New Moon Foods. I have seen a number of posts online regarding collapsed decks and partial roof failures. Yet the snow continues…

Add the Truckee CVS to the collapsed roof list…