New Terrain Alert!

I just went for the eye catching headline there, didn’t I? Yes we finally saw a minor terrain expansion today at Alpine Meadows. It had nothing to do with snow from Mother Nature. This one was all about the efforts made by the Mountain Ops team to get some snow coverage down on Red Trail, a.k.a. Dance Floor, after some warm rains decimated the natural snow there last week. But around 10:40 this morning, after Ski Patrol finished planting an estimated 432 bamboo stakes, many with red lollipops, then strung a quarter mile of rope line, the terrain was made available to the eager public.

It was perfect timing, as the Upper Weasel One and Weasel Run were getting those large sugar piles mixed with icy plates again. It actually was kind of pleasant to ski the firmness of Red Trail when it opened. Coverage for the first 85% of the run was very good. It’s that last pitch down to Sandy’s Corner where coverage is still very thin, and the width of the groomer is quite narrow. The Tilt-A-Whirl section on the left side of Red Trail was left ungroomed, and the adventurous were seeking some smooth turns away from the crowds on what looked like a smooth breakable crust. It was mostly supportive, but if someone is going to break through that crust, it probably would have been me. I stuck to the groomed area.

For those keeping track, the last estimate of how much terrain is skiable at Alpine Meadows was about 6.4% of the mapped trails (from the 2015 Master Plan). With the addition of Dance Floor, a portion of Sandy’s Corner and East Runout, the estimated amount of open terrain at Alpine Meadows stands at about 9.8%. Yeah that’s not much for being one month into the ski season, but I can be the cheerleader here and say that’s a 30% gain!

As of now, only Dance Floor/Red Trail has been opened. We did some asking around today about the possibility of opening Charity and Werners, where coverage looks reasonable…until the last 100 yards above Sandy’s Corner. It would definitely be character building there, but not as much as last June. We did note that the snowmaking team was out on those runs beefing up the padding on all of the snowmaking uprights. We also noted that Ski Patrol did all of the tower pads along the Roundhouse lift. Maybe they are thinking about it. Unfortunately, with the warm and humid air mass over the last few days, snowmaking conditions have been abysmal. That has limited the ability of teams to remedy that lower section.

We keep hearing hints that Summit is possible for Thursday or Friday. Hopefully that will still happen. That said, it is likely to be a complete junk show if it gets announced as a major expansion by the marketing department. It would likely bring more people to the mountain than the new terrain could absorb. As it stands, West Runout looks like there is no way that could be ready, so access to Summit would be on East Runout and then down and around Roundhouse. We remember seeing some time ago where they used the RFID gates at Roundhouse for both lifts. We shall see. The bigger question out there is whether an open Summit Lift would mean just the groomed portion of Alpine Bowl, or a wider opening of off piste terrain. We are really lacking in off piste terrain compared to our neighbor to the north.

No Great White Hope In The Weather Future

The hope for a big series of snowstorms to kick this season into gear…well, it keeps getting kicked down the road. We are now looking at the possibility of bigger storms out around the second week of January to mid-January. Yes there are two storms people have been talking about this week. One of them rolls in tomorrow, and a second one looks like it rolls through Saturday. Neither one of them is the storm we have been waiting for all season. Both are weak and possibly a bit wet.

For Wednesday, up to an inch or two of snow is possible. As of this minute, the models are showing up to about 6 inches of snow possible Saturday into Saturday night. That said, the Saturday storm is not within the range of the more accurate short range models like the NAM or HRRR. Snow levels for these two storms look to be close to base area level for Alpine Meadows. That means more like spackle days than powder days. But that is exactly what we still need. One other side affect of these storms is that the winds are really supposed to pick up during this period, which will likely affect the Windola operations. 🙃

In the longer range, there is somewhat of a pattern change possibly ahead. We’ve been under the influence of a strong continental high pressure system over the western US for quite some time. The Wednesday system just bounces off the high, but the Saturday system appears like it will undercut the high pressure system. You can see in the GIF below that we stay more in the blue and a few more lows dip through over the next 16 days. We could see some stronger storms move in, with the caveat that those storms may not have as much cold air from the Arctic, as we like them to have at this time of the year. I’m not banking on anything yet as the mid and long rang models have had a poor skill level for this snow season.

Ski teams resume tomorrow and that will bring more people to the mountain over the coming days. Hopefully that will be mitigated if the Windola goes on wind hold. We will just have to go skiing to see how that pans out. Thanks again to the Mountain Ops and Ski Patrol teams for getting Red Trail open today. I know I enjoyed it.