It was like a private country club at Alpine Meadows today. I’m not sure whether it was the warm weather that spooked people, or that you could get to Palisades Tahoe without sitting for 10 minutes (or more) in that pothole repair project on Highway 89. The lack of any sort of freeze overnight, or a high temperature near 69 degrees may have also sent people in a different direction other than skiing today. Either way, there just were not that many people skiing and riding today.
Continuing my trend from Wednesday, I purposefully avoided groomers today, other than the need to get back to a chairlift. Bobble disagreed with me wholeheartedly, but I will still contend that Tower 19 was actually smoother than Alpine Bowl this morning. We spent a few laps testing that hypothesis out before deciding we had better get to Sherwood before too long. Whoa, Yellow Trail was groomed for the first time in quite a while…discovered while we made out way to TLC. The High Traverse route to Sherwood never opened today due to soft conditions.
I can’t tell you how the Sherwood Run skied today, as all of my Sherwood laps were dedicated to Chute Zero laps. Although the sun cups has spread again like dandelions, they were so soft today you could just mash right through them. Also, because the snow was warm and water filled, it was quite slow, thus the thought of skiing in slow motion. The groomed return from the South Face/Chute Zero zone was very tedious today, as if one were driving on the freeway stuck in first gear. We left Sherwood by about 9:45, and I believe by that time there were about four people still making laps there.
Back on the frontside, we made a few more laps in slow motion on Sunday School, which is burning out more each day, down to Yellow Trail. I also did a ceremonial run through Chicken Leg, were the sun cups were large, but super soft. Also, skiing them in slow motion was not such a bad thing. We also found some good turns on Sympathy Face, until you ran out of steepness.
Eventually, Scott did open at about 11am. It was possibly an hour too late. Ridge and Bobby’s were already pretty sticky, and the runout back to Scott even stickier. We called it a day and headed back to the lodge. I pride myself on getting across the Trail of Tears without having to push. Today I started my straight-line around the top of Weasel, but came to a complete stop by the time I got to the Chalet. Slow motion at work.
Object Heavy was doing a sound check on the Sun Deck as we were heading out today and they sounded kind of fun. Had there been some sweet deals on beer or afternoon BBQ specials or tacos at the taco truck, I might have actually hung around. I saw a few fun lovers coming in from the parking lot just for the music.
It was great to be back out on skis today, slow or not. Temperatures tomorrow could be just as warm, but there is a decent chance that clouds roll in midday, and a chance of thunderstorms. Same for Sunday. Hopefully we get the shade of the clouds without the lightning. See you out there.
