Summit Opens…But It Is Still Very Busy

It’s a moment we have been waiting for, the opening of the Summit Six chairlift at Alpine Meadows. It’s a fantastic lift that usually serves a whole lot of terrain. It’s also a moment we have been dreading, as the Summit lift is a huge draw in the world of Tahoe skiing and riding. It seems like half the world arrived to ride the new terrain today, many not knowing that it would only offer a small slice of new terrain.

To their credit, the marketing department did a good job of spelling out that limitation in their social channels yesterday. As usual, Liz Worgan also did a fantastic job of spelling that out in the latest operations blog. She even went so far as naming the three runs that would be open today: Alpine Bowl, Sunspot and Palisades. I know that sounds like a lot of room to spread out. But the official statistics don’t agree. The combined mapped acreage of those three runs is 56 acres, bringing the total amount of acreage currently opened for skiing and riding to 130 acres out of 753 acres of mapped runs at Alpine Meadows. So saying it loudly here: The amount of available terrain currently open at Alpine Meadows is now just over 17%. If you include all of the hike to terrain that is not as well mapped, the open terrain drops to about 6.5%. It’s possible that that percentage is slightly higher as it is unclear how those “in-between” places like Tower 19, Pygmy Forest And Crash & Burn would fit into the calculations.

While a lot of people have already determined that so far this season is off to a slow start – far more have paid for their Ikon pass, made their parking reservation and have a non-cancellable AirBnB reservation. They are here for that vacation. The parking lot was the most full it has been yet this season, with Lot 3 loosely full and Lot 4 about half full when I left around noon. Since it was not overly windy today, the B2B was doing the thing it does best….bringing people over from the other side that were tired of 10-20 minute lift waits at Siberia and Gold Coast.

One of the bigger things to note is that as we add lifts to the system, there are still only two routes down the mountain. You’re either taking Red Trail (Dance Floor) or Weasel to get back to the TLC, Roundhouse or Summit. Those two runs represent only 4% of the mountain, and with the exception of the beginners, everyone is headed down those two runs. As I noted in my last report, the West Runout to Summit was not open today. Getting back to Summit required a trip down and around Roundhouse, then back up to Summit. There were a number of ne’er-do-wells that had that thought “if I straight-line from here I can make it to Summit”, causing a huge potential for collisions in the base area today. I saw more patrol out there playing speed cop today than I have in a long time. I even saw a couple of mountain hosts doing speed control at the bottom of East Runout…first time ever.

I believe more people will be here over the next three days, and that bottleneck of getting people to the base area is only going to get worse. Hopefully, the decision will be made to allow some “sub-optimal terrain” to open up more routes to the base area. Otherwise, it sure would make sense to run ABC to keep more people at the top of the mountain.

How were conditions on Summit today? They were pretty good to start off. Definitely variable. Heavy pow quickly turned into moguls. Over toward Sunspot, things were almost spring like. Rocks were absolutely there. I’m really interested to see what the mountain ops team does with this zone for tomorrow. Yes, I know there was some “very good” but after today it’s not still “very good”. The last thing I want to do is create hype that will bring even more people tomorrow.

Entering A Stormier State?

We have the next wave of snow moving in Friday night into Saturday night. As of this afternoon, things are looking pretty much the same as what I posted two days ago. Here’s the projected snowfall through Sunday based on the GEFS ensembles, showing the potential for 6-8 inches of new snowfall:

Note how narrow that band of snow is on the map, an indication that this is a higher snow level event. Snow levels should run between 6-7k feet. Again this is going to create a Sierra Cement day, not a powder day. Also keep in mind that there is very little off piste terrain right now for enjoying that new snow. It’s also not going to be enough to open “the backside” of Alpine Meadows. Casual visitors are always infatuated with going to the “backside”, as if it’s a magical place where conditions are always perfect.

In the longer run, the models are still running with the idea of the ridge being undercut by the next several low pressure systems. Differently today, it’s advertising a very deep low pressure system out in the long range. While that still may not be enough to open any of Alpine Meadows “backsides”, it could open more off piste terrain off of the front side lifts that are currently open. It’s encouraging to see a few days of these model runs being consistent.

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