All Skiing Is Good Skiing

All skiing is good skiing, especially when you are back at your home mountain. Today was day two of the season at Alpine Meadows. Yes, I was there for opening day yesterday. Since I had an invitation to see The Grinch musical in Reno yesterday afternoon, I let Andy have the honor of writing the report for day one.

I stayed on the mountain 50% longer today, as there were slightly fewer people, and the temperatures were slightly warmer. I skied every section of Weasel today, avoiding bubbles of other skiers and varying the terrain as much as possible with just one run open. I did stay completely on piste today, after yesterday’s core shot incident. Thankfully that resulted only in ski damage and not body damage. I was out today on the new Bob Ross Pro skis, so that encouraged me to ski with a bit more care.

I am so thankful for the efforts of the mountain ops team at getting some terrain open for us to ski. Up until a few days ago, the temperatures presented some big challenges, but that’s not the only challenge. I had a minute to chat with our mountain manager, Jeff Goldstone, this morning at the top of Weasel. He mentioned that one of the compressors for the snowmaking system is currently not functional, so they are making snow at a little over 50% capacity. That has something to do with the team not starting on Rock Garden and Dance Floor just yet. He did say that they expect to have beginner terrain open on Weasel, Subway and the Magic Carpet by next weekend. That’s important for families that need beginner terrain. It also will take most of those beginners off of Weasel. The fix or replacement of that compressor will take some time.

We just have to accept this slow start to the season this year. Not every season can be like last season. This is just a friendly reminder that Alpine Meadows did not even open until December 16th in 2021. All skiing is good skiing. Some might be better than others, but the feeling of skiing your home mountain can’t be beat. Some of you had the guts to challenge my allegiance to Alpine Meadows since I skied at Mount Rose for 10 days this month. I ask you this, how many people do you know that still have the Alpine Meadows app on their phone, even though it has not been functional for about a decade? I do know one, as reader Brad H. sent me a screen shot last month. This one is from my phone today.

After skiing today, I grabbed lunch at Treats and did the long “shiny box scenic lunch tour” over to Palisades and back. It’s probably one of the better uses for the shiny boxes. It was interesting to get the bird’s eye view of the White Wolf and KT-22 terrain without snow. Randy proved it is possible to jump out of the gondola cabin, throw away your trash, and make it back into the same cabin for the return ride. Here’s the view toward the upper mountain at Palisades. It’s not there yet, but hopefully they can get Gold Coast by the weekend. There’s been a lot of work done on the Red Dog WROD. We all agreed that it looks awful from the air. The shiny boxes will not be running mid-week.

Will Mother Nature Be Any Help?

There’s been very little consistency in the forecast as it applies to snow in the Sierra within the range of the 16 day model runs. Last week, there were a few model runs that forecast the perfect AR event, the kind that can get the whole mountain open within a few days. Those were immediately followed by forecasts that showed the AR pointed further north, keeping us on the warm side of the jet with high snow levels. Those are the kind of events that can wash out all of the early season snow making efforts. Since then, the models are looking at the potential of a cut off low scenario again, with little forcing from the jet stream at all.

That situation is difficult to forecast, as we have always said. Typically it brings more rainfall to coastal areas rather than snow fall to the Sierra. The good news is that right now, the snow level looks like to stay below base level. Right now it looks like we could see a shower or two mid-week, but the stronger waves of precipitation look to happen Friday into Sunday. There’s still quite a bit of variability in the models. Below I present the GFS and Canadian operational runs and the GEFS ensemble run. Meteorologists give far more weight to the ensemble models. But it looks like it has the potential to be a little stormy for the meteorological start of winter.

The models really diverge after that. The GFS wants to dry things out in the second week of the model runs. The Canadian and Euro are holding onto the idea of more, possibly stronger, storms.

Reservations Required

Next weekend is the first in a long season of weekends where parking reservations will be required at Alpine Meadows and our neighbor to the north. This Tuesday, November 28th at noon, the first block of free parking reservations is supposed to be released. A second block gets released at 7pm. The easiest way to set yourself up for making those reservations is described in my post titled This Is The Way. I’ve even had a number of employees say that following the process I suggested worked better than other “official” methods. Why am I sharing this with you? It’s just means I will have to compete with all of you for parking reservations. Larry will tell me that I am “hot-spotting” again.

See you out on the hill tomorrow…and the next day and the next day!