Short Term Improvements, Long Term…Don’t Look

It was another fun day of skiing at both mountains. Terrain is still limited, but keep your mind open and invite some friends and you will have a good time for at least a few hours. Looking at the short term forecast, things are looking a bit more promising. The possibility of rain for the ski area has been removed over the next few days, and the short term models are bumping up the snow totals a bit. More importantly it looks like the mountain ops team will get a decent snowmaking window.

Most of our laps were done on Hotter Wheels today, until we decided to take another trip over the hill to NAW Valley*. With the inversion layer in place today, the north facing terrain on Weasel Run felt and skied like winter. The south eastern exposure at a higher elevation on Gold Coast felt more like spring skiing today. Which was better? Both were delightful. I know, I had bad things to say about Red Dog and Resort Chair yesterday – but the Gold Coast terrain is fun. In particular we found the small bumps on Gold Coast Face to be a lot of fun, even with some spiciness due to rocks. Sadly, Bob Ross now has a scar on his cheek.

*NAW Valley, the newly coined politically correct name for the other side, which is shorthand for “Native American Women’s Valley” I can’t take credit for that term.

As far as the weather models look, I put together this animated GIF of the potential snowfall from the NAM Model. The NAM focuses on shorter range weather, namely the next 72 hours. While the GIF speed is a bit fast, note the purple in the frame marked “Latest”. That purple color highlights a possibility of a foot of snow by the end of this storm.

That snow would not arrive all at once, it will pace itself over the next two days. I know that one foot will not make up a huge difference lower on the mountain. But as you look upwards into Alpine Bowl, these storms are starting to add up to something. Here’s the details on the automated point forecast, which is for mid-mountain.

Looking at the longer range, things don’t look quite as promising. We had a 36 hour run of models where it looked like we could see a big storm or two. Then they were gone like a desert mirage. Rather than getting too deep into the technical stuff, here’s the current PNA forecast. Most of the ensemble members have given up on troughing in the Pacific in the extended term. It’s now showing a neutral PNA, which is better than the extensive ridging models I was seeing last night. Don’t panic yet. The models have been completely unstable since this ski season began, and really nothing has been reliable more than a few days out.

Eighteen Years Of Inaccurate Maps

The other day, I noticed an inconsistency in the mapping when it comes to that small part of the mountain we have been skiing on this season. I’ve been skiing Alpine Meadows since 1975, so I’ll be honest that I rarely even consider looking at a map of the area. Looking at the current map, it shows an incorrect placement of the Weasel Run in relation to the current Treeline Cirque chairlift. It incorrectly shows Weasel Run to skiers left of the lift, rather than correctly showing it to skiers right. I am guessing that most people have not noticed this and still managed to find the their way down the mountain. But it did bother the OCD side of me. That said, ski maps have been inaccurate depictions of reality since the first ski lifts were installed.

So I did some research at SkiMap.org, which is a huge site containing historical copies of ski area maps from around the world and across decades of time. As it turns out, every ski map for Alpine Meadows, all of the way back to 2005, shows the incorrect placement of Weasel Run. Here’s a gallery (all images via SkiMap.org):

There is a gap in the record between the years 2005 and 2009. From my recollection, the map was not updated much during the JMA years. That would reflect the lack of updates on the mountain during that time span. Here’s the 2005 map, where is is correctly depicted:

Then again, the lack of detail in that era of Alpine Meadows maps was comical. Look at the number of double black diamonds! Sadly, Alpine Meadows is one of the few mountains that does not have ski maps done by the master James Niehues.

Late Addition: I totally forgot to mention that until the Hot Wheels chair went in during 1998, Weasel Run was skiers left of the old Weasel lift. The old lift line is basically along what is now labelled East Creek.

Reserve Now

It’s Tuesday and you probably already got a reminder to make your weekend parking reservation. I made reservations for both days around noon today, taking less than a minute to complete the process. If it really does snow a foot this week, I expect we will see a few more people this weekend.