After a couple of almost spring like days, today felt like it was January 97th. The forecast called for higher elevation snow today, but when I woke up, there was an inch of snow in my driveway in Truckee. That supplied some hope for a few decent turns this morning. Still, I smartly kept my expectations low, and they were exceeded.
There was about 3 inches of snow when I arrived in the Alpine Meadows parking lot, but there was also a lot of wind. There were also some grumbles about Roundhouse having a windhold sign, even though the app indicated it was open. But, Andy and I loaded on Hotter Wheels and decided to head straight over to Sherwood, even knowing that it had been quite warm and sunny there the last couple of days.
As usual, the strategy that works best in these conditions is to look for lightly traveled groomed slopes that were groomed on the first shift. We found a good 6 inches of new snow with almost no tracks, and the consistency was more like whipped cream instead of creamed cheese. Here’s Andy on our second run:
Watching skiers attempting off piste turns was enough to keep me on piste. Skiers and riders coming out of Powerline looked like they were getting bumped around quite a bit by yesterday’s ruts. Lower Powerline offered smoother powder turns with far fewer ruts, as did the Sherwood Forest (aka Howling Woods).
I also did find nice powder again at Shuttle Cornice, where again it seemed to have blown in quite a bit deeper, but still scratchy:
Randy sent this picture from the bottom of Counterweight, where he reported that it was not quite enough new snow to erase the bumps underneath:
After a half dozen runs we decided to head back to see what was happening on the front side. It occurred to me that I had never restored my Tweeter notifications after the Maui trip, and I realized that maybe Roundhouse had opened. We found it spinning with a small crowd already in line waiting for the opening. After a fifteen minute wait, patrol finally cleared the opening. Again, the best snow was generally found on the groomed slopes covered with new snow. We managed a couple of hot laps before things started getting “interesting”. Suddenly the fog deck lowered, temperatures rose, and the snow starting sticking to my googles. The slopes were getting more crowded and you had to tolerate a lot of “instaMoguls” on your way to those last few powder lines. That seems like a good time to stop skiing.
Summit, Scott or Lakeview did not open today. It’s possible that they may offer some early fun tomorrow. That said, temperatures were rising and the snow levels were rising as well. So how that works out with an overnight freeze remains to be seen. Based on the incoming Friday afternoon traffic, pictures of snow on TV newscasts and a sunny weekend forecast, I think we will see a busy weekend at Alpine Meadows and the place next door. Also, there’s some sort of race being set up on Werners-Boomerang-Ultraviolet…without more details, I’m not sure how many people that will bring.
We are looking at mostly sunny conditions through Tuesday at this point. Temperatures will be fairly warm over that period, so expect some stickiness, especially as we again have to transition back to corn.
In my last report, I mentioned that many resorts are about to close. I didn’t spend much time calling around for dates, and other sources on the web were just taking wild guesses. The Tahoe Fund people did put out a graphic a couple of days ago with the details. I just made one correction below:
