Please, Please Mister Freeze

Third Winter sure was fun, with some very good powder skiing over the weekend. For those that skied at Palisades on Monday, or at the employee ski day at Alpine Meadows yesterday, the winter-like snow fun continued. Today, we were stuck in the middle of the mank cycle. Temperatures over the last two days did not quite get warm enough for the melting and freezing we need to see rapid corn development.

Consequently the good skiing was limited today. After two days of completing honeydew work, I was hoping for a full ski day today. The snow had other plans. Early on there was some very good skiing. There was a good freeze overnight, and my first run was very firm right from the top of the mountain to the bottom of the mountain. Because of the early start time, those conditions held up for a few runs. But it did not take long for the sun to do its damage. I tried out Sunspot around 9 am and it was fly paper, fairly smooth but very tacky.

Because of that, I wanted to waste no time hiking today to head to High Traverse. There’s the people that will always tell you how awesome it was, and maybe it was for a few turns, but I know those runouts were not fun. No way. Instead I was intent on making as many Summit laps as I could before it got sticky. I never bothered with Sherwood today either. Best runs of the day were Palisades and Pygmy Forest…probably Keyhole as well.

I was hindered somewhat in that goal, as there was a good size line at Summit, at least for mid-week in May. We no longer have “country club skiing” when Palisades is closed two days a week. Part of the problem the past two weeks is the small corrals. Once the crowd extends past the small corrals that have been setup, it’s a little chaotic getting people moving onto the lift without having people cut into the line from every direction. It harshed my mellow today.

I may have missed some Tweet or other announcement, but today was the first day of the Sherwood/Scott flip flop schedule, which is typical of spring at Alpine Meadows, and a good idea. Sherwood ran from 8am until about 11am, then Scott ran from about 11am until the 2 pm closing. Here, the corral was also small, and the resulting overflow line frequently reached back to the Chalet. By this point of the day, Scott was really the only lift left with pretty good skiing.

I experienced a very weird ski condition today. When Scott opened at 11am, both Ridge and Bobby’s were still very firm. Yet when we skied them, a very thin layer of shaved off snow had melted on the top surface and that was sticky. It was the oddest sensation skiing this sticky firm snow. Several of us noticed it. The corn cycle definitely has a way to go. I declared myself done just before noon today.

So Mister Freeze, we need a couple more nights of good freezes. The warm day time temperatures are here, we just need another couple of freezing nights to improve conditions. Daytime temperatures climb another 10° tomorrow, and then another 10° by the weekend. The skies remain mostly sunny through Saturday. Sunday afternoon will bring a fair chance of thunderstorms to the Sierra. Looking at the models, they show a monsoonal pattern developing, with thunderstorms moving up the Sierra crest from the south on an almost daily basis as we get into the second half of May. Typically that is a pattern we see in July, not May. This year has been nothing like “normal”, which probably does not exist any longer.

It was great to be back out on skis today…tomorrow should be incrementally better.