Why Yes, It Was Busy

After a brief reprieve from crowds yesterday, they were back today. Still I managed to get in about 10 laps this morning before I decided that enough was enough. I left around 10:30 am, probably as crowds were peaking on the slopes. Looking at the afternoon webcams, there’s basically no line at Summit or Roundhouse, even with TLC going on a maintenance hold. (Yikes! The latest tweet says TLC is on maintenance hold for the rest of the day. Hopefully back in business for tomorrow!)

I think people have more questions today about parking rather than the skiing. Up until yesterday, I had only reserved parking for Monday, July 3rd. But the skiing was fun yesterday and the crowds were light. That encouraged me to go ahead and reserve parking for rest of the Alpine Meadows Summer Session. There’s a part of me that was just curious about how all of that parking stuff was going to work, even though we have been told that this is not what they are doing next season.

I left my house half an hour earlier than usual to head to Alpine Meadows today, and was greeted by quite a bit of traffic along 89. It turns out that many of those cars were headed toward the lake or the river, as few turned up Alpine Meadows road.

Near the top of the road, where John Scott Trail meets Alpine Meadows Road, I saw the largest collection of “No Parking” pylons I have ever seen in Northern California. I couldn’t get a photo, as it’s a bad idea to have your phone out taking pictures while driving when two CHP cruisers are parked on the shoulders watching for miscreants. There was also the CMS signage indicating that parking reservations were required.

Other than that, there was no parking police checking my identification or asking for my papers. I parked in my normal place and went about waxing my skis. But someone was checking license numbers, looking for those that wanted to test the waters of non-compliance. When I left shortly before 11am, I noted a significant number of windshields sporting a “warning ticket”.

What does that warning do? Will they boot tires the second time? Call for a tow? Access license records at DMV and then hotlist your pass? Nobody knows that I asked. My guess is that it will be like the principal at the last school I taught at that simply gave warning after warning after warning, doing nothing except running the clock until the school year was over. Who wants to test it out?

The Melt Is On In A Big Way

The temperatures at Alpine Meadows reached into the 70’s yesterday afternoon, and then only dropped to the mid 50’s overnight. Consequently, a lot of snow melted. Unfortunately there’s just not that much more snow to farm to rebuild anymore. Here’s a couple of examples:

• Yesterday, Sunspot was ungroomed, but basically well covered except for two big open patches. Today, the top 25% of Sunspot was a minefield of rocks and logs, requiring careful navigation, if you cared about your skis.

• Yesterday. Werner’s (Blue) was a pretty solid WROD groomed at least one cat wide all of the way to Sandy’s Corner. Today, much of that was melted out. What was left was a strip less than a cat wide, and it did not make it all of the way to Sandy’s Corner.

That put a lot more pressure on Dance Floor (Red) today, as far fewer people were willing to navigate Werners. By 10:30 am, it was turning into a mogul field with a lot of pepper showing through. Still skiing was fun. I managed about 8 laps on Summit before the line started getting way outside of the corral, as in the line outside of the corral was about 500% more than the line inside of the corral. That said, for the most part, people were just stoked to be there and were pretty well behaved, relative to the usual powder day stampedes.

We bailed and took a lap toward TLC and a shorter lift line. Getting to TLC (or Roundhouse) from the top of the mountain requires that you use Weasel 1, past Hot Wheels Gully. You may not of noticed it, but Weasel 1 is a bit steep for beginners, and today it was slightly more than one groomer width. By mid morning, it was growing moguls. There were more people with skis and boards off walking down that pitch than actually skiing or riding down. I wanted to stop for a photo but some Jerry was riding my tails and there was not a safe way to stop for a picture.

We’ve been saying that Weasel is well covered, relative to the rest of the mountain. I’ll retract that statement now. A friend of mine commented that he hit more rocks on two laps of Weasel than he has hit all season. Yeah, the snow is going fast, and there is not really all that much more farmable snow left to fix things. Mountain Ops folk are doing the best they can with very little snow left on the mountain.

We appreciate your efforts, and I will be back tomorrow to make the best of what is skiable. Certainly it was way easier to keep the mountain going in 2011, the last time Alpine Meadows was open for the Fourth.  Here’s a picture of me skiing High Yellow on July 21 in 2011. I skied it again in August and a small portion in September that year.

Yeah…a lot of hoopla regarding some bands and beer at the base of Alpine Meadows today, and the next three days. You’ll have to look elsewhere for a report on that part of the day. FYI, reserved parking is now sold out for the Fourth of July. Yikes.