Double The Fun

We’re eight days into the Alpine Meadows season and overnight the available terrain for skiing and riding just about doubled. For a few moments, I got hyped up and started calculating the available acreage for each ski run. But then I came to my senses and just decided to stick with the “doubled” estimation. The obvious part is that the Meadow Chair, Subway Chair and Big Carpet joined Hotter Wheels on the schedule today. I know you want to know, yes we did ride every available lift at Alpine Meadows today. For those not aware, that fete is called “Around The World”.

While spinning a lap on each of those lifts was a nice novelty today, the bigger story was that the right side of the main Weasel Run was opened today. Only the lowermost section above the Chalet was open yesterday. That doubles the amount of skiable terrain above the Chalet. Adding in the other beginner terrain opened today and you can see how I arrived at an estimate of double the skiable average available today. One thing I personally enjoyed about that new terrain is that it was not perfectly manicured. There still was some character to that part of the run in the form of little rollers and dips, as well as a bit of brush poking up. That little bit of spice made it less attractive to low ability skiers and riders. I am definitely offering a high 5 to the mountain ops team for getting that expansion done, while also opening up three more lifts today.

Added note: The app claims I skied East Creek 7 times. I thought East Creek was actually to the right, which is also called “the Fast Lane”. This is another area of the mountain, like Sherwood, where the naming of runs seems inconsistent over the years. Skateboard Alley? Yeah I dunno. Here’s the current trail map from the official site. It does nothing to clarify the situation. Then there’s the thing that they have the lift placement incorrect in relation to Weasel. Oops.

The weather was a bit challenging today. The forecast said snow, but the snow level was running somewhere around 6500′. That makes skiing on the lower half of the mountain a soggy experience. I’m still somewhat in “spring” mode, wearing pants that have not been waterproof for years, and a lightweight puffy without a shell. In my defense it looked far sunnier when I left home today. It also would have been ideal to be sporting a Skigee today, as my goggles are still the wiperless version. The wet snow kept falling, never seeming to add up to much, except for where it stuck to my non-waterproof outerwear.

For whatever reason, it was far from busy today. Looking back at Andy’s report from this date in 2022, the parking lot was nearly full at 8:30, and the line at the Roundhouse Chair went to the moon. There was nothing of that sort at Alpine Meadows today. When I left today, I counted 11 cars in Lot 3. The line for Hotter Wheels rarely extended beyond the RFID gates. None of the slopes felt overcrowded.

Maybe it was the reservations that scared people away. It’s probably more likely due to Gold Coast being open over the hill. The app reported significantly longer wait times over there. That is where all of the cool kids hang out. Rad Dog and Resort Chair looked less busy. The shiny boxes were not in service today as there was a mild breeze blowing.

What’s Next?

It seems like the mountain ops teams are amassing snowmaking gear near the base of Roundhouse, and that seems to be the most likely area for additional snowmaking. They will be slightly handicapped with temperatures getting warmer over the next four days. The best snowmaking happens when we get freezing temperatures both day and night. We may not see that until next Thursday or Friday. Meteorological winter did start yesterday, but Mother Nature looks to be on the Hallmark schedule.

The PNA index is still calling for troughing to develop in the Pacific as we get into the second week of December. But that is just one ingredient necessary for winter storms. There’s no big push of moisture, nor any strengthening of the jet stream in our sights yet. I spent half an hour reviewing multiple models just now trying to force one of them to show that a big storm is on the way. Alas, there were none to be found today. Maybe tomorrow. The forecast is not totally dry. A couple of more weak storms appear in the models around next weekend.

Tune Ups

We did some major restructuring at Unofficial Alpine last month to modernize our underpinnings and make things work better. I have continued to make some minor tune ups over the last week:

• Completely redid the Weather Links page for a fresh new look. I also updated the links to a new Remote Data page at NOAA and added two new weather resources
• Tidied up the menu structure for both the desktop and mobile sites so things are more intuitive
• Added sharing buttons again to the bottom of each post, making it easier for you to share our posts. These inexplicably disappeared for the last couple of seasons. You sharing posts is one way we build our community.
• Changed our subscription emails to only send an excerpt and a link to new posts. I finally cracked the code on removing the broken featured image that was appearing at the top of these emails. It seems like most of our readers have managed the transition to reading posts on the site instead of in an email. That seems to have increased the number of readers adding their own commentary. We like that.