Quality Chalk, Who We Are & What Will Be

There’s a headline that will either completely mystify you and make you want to read this report. Or it will do the exact opposite, causing you to shake your head, and skip Unofficial Alpine for the day. So here’s the TL;DR: There was some very excellent winter skiing today. There’s a lot of new readers here that may not understand what this site is about. Then we should talk about what might transpire for the weekend.

Let’s Talk Chalk

Back in my teaching days, I was never a fan of chalk. One of the first missions in any of my classrooms was to replace chalk with Expo markers. But now that I am just a ski bum and blogger, my love for chalk has grown immensely. For those not in the know, chalk is a very special kind of packed powder. I am not entirely certain what weather conditions lead to “chalky snow”, but I have learned to love it.

There weren’t all that many powder turns left after yesterday’s busy day, but there was a lot of awesome winter soft snow and chalk. The light wasn’t completely flat today, but a high deck of clouds filtered the sunlight enough that no radiational heating was happening. That made it not a great day for high speed groomers. It was a day to seek out off piste terrain that made you work a bit. It was hard to go wrong, as everybody had some different ideas. Tower 19, Sunspot, D6, D7, D8 were all great off of Summit. Off of Roundhouse, I was particularly drawn to God’s Knob/Sunday School, then those super fun bumps on Yellow.

Overall coverage is getting slightly better with each storm but it is still low tide out there. Skiing the chalky zones today made it really easy to pick out exposed rocks and shrubbery. The groomed slopes were super grippy this morning too and getting more plentiful. We enjoyed a few off of Scott this morning. Also noted was the first grooming of Red Ridge and Ladies Slalom. The first was great, the second, not so much. We all commented that we have never seen Ladies Slalom groomed in such a low tide state. It was narrow, there were obstacles and variations in the quality of the snow at every turn. I gave it a second run later to make sure that was really the experience. I have to give them credit for trying!

Everything will change pretty quickly tomorrow with a new storm coming in, so the big takeaway here is to know that it is still low tide in many areas. The base area at Alpine Meadows has reported 71″ of snowfall so far this season. Last season, we were around 230 inches of snowfall by now. That could make you sad. But if you skied in the 2014-15 season, we were only at 56 inches by the end of January, so smile a little.

What Is Unofficial Alpine?

We have a lot of new readers at Unofficial Alpine this season, and that’s a good thing. There’s two reasons this has happened. The first is that Buried: The Alpine Meadows Avalanche appeared on Netflix and thousands of people watched the movie for the first time. Then they went to Google to find more information, often finding my piece about the 1982 avalanche. The second has to do with the unfortunate avalanche at KT-22 this week. My piece on that avalanche has been widely shared on social media and also got picked up by Google as an important source. Just over the last three days, readership is running about 2,000% of average. That part is awesome.

What’s not so awesome is that yesterday, I had to spend hours moderating comments about the avalanche situation, especially after a second in-bounds avalanche occurred yesterday at Alpine Meadows. People really want to express themselves and I don’t want this to be the Wild West when it comes to armchair quarterbacking mountain operations. So welcome new readers! I would suggest that you consider reading the About Unofficial Alpine page so you know something about this site, and then please do read the Ground Rules so that you know something about what sort of comments might get moderated. We do love it when people want to talk about stuff. Some subjects will never be moderated: oversold passes, the B2B, or short term rentals being examples. Have at it!

Wait, There Was An Avalanche At Alpine Meadows Yesterday?

I know that was not in the headline, but we should mention it. Somewhere around 12:30 yesterday afternoon, an avalanche occurred in Wolverine Bowl. I was already off the mountain, frustrated with lift lines, so I had zero details to say yesterday. The best news is that there were no people caught in this one. Summit was put on Patrol Hold, as was Scott, since patrollers and other staff had to report to Wolverine to conduct a search and assess the possibility of additional slides.

The slide was located just to skiers left of what is normally the Wolverine groomed slope. See the red arrow in the photo above. There were many traverse tracks through the zone, as that is generally the path that many people take to ski or ride Lower Idiots. In all of the years I have been skiing Alpine Meadows, I don’t think I have ever seen a slide in that particular area. Talking to some knowledgable sources, they said the same, especially from the trigger point near the rocks. The best I can say is that the cause is likely similar to the slide at KT-22. There was extensive wind loading from a long period of 100+ mph winds over the ridges this week, and there are a couple of weak layers in the snow pack.

Andy posted pictures yesterday of some very big slides that happened during control work yesterday. This is going to continue to be an issue as more snow falls in these “not yet skier packed” areas of the mountain. I was thinking about this today, and sure enough, ski patrol was out doing bombing in the north bowls (terrain not open yet) this afternoon, which shows they are being proactive.

Alpine Meadows and Palisades Tahoe are not the only mountains experiencing this issue. Yesterday, the Mammoth Mountain Ski Patrol was also experiencing some very active snow movement as a result of their control work. Every backcountry skier I know is being über careful for now, sticking to low angle meadow skipping. The snow pack this year is a bit touchy and eventually some of those weak layers will bond, hopefully.

Be smart, as terrain selection is a huge part of any avalanche course. Also know that inbounds slides are a rarity. The drive to the mountain or the walk through an icy parking lot is a far greater risk to you, and we all accept that risk each day.

Storm(s)

We do have storms moving in for the weekend: a snow storm and a people storm. Both were just getting started today.

By all thinking, Martin Luther King Weekend is generally one of the busiest holiday periods of the ski season. Maybe that will not be the case. I just checked and at least one free parking reservation was available for Saturday at Alpine Meadows. The incoming traffic typical of a Friday afternoon was not as great on the slopes or on Highway 89 as usual. The most important metric was that I counted 14 open spaces in the Safeway parking lot in Truckee just now.

Why is that? If you have been on social media this week, people are freaked out about avalanche potential. I blame the NBC Nightly News for that. Then there is the incoming storm, which is well advertised to be warmer than the last two storms. It is not necessarily going to be a powder day tomorrow or Sunday. It’s more likely to be a classic Sierra Cement day. While that may not be what you were hoping to ski this weekend, it is the base builder than is needed to open Sherwood or increase the amount of grooming that can be done.

So, let’s take a look at the snowstorm itself. The first graphic is the 500mb Height Anomaly, which is a great way to show where the low pressure system will be that is bringing us this snow. Note the time designation of 00z Sunday (z for Zulu). In standard terms that is 4:00pm PST Saturday.

You might notice that low pressure system is way to the north. We are just getting the tail edge of that storm. We are barely into the cold air or strongest winds. This storm would be almost insignificant except that odds are it will tap into some subtropical moisture. While we are here, check out that low pressure system in the midwest. That is a doozy!

Here’s the NAM for expected snowfall through 10pm Saturday. If you need help interpreting that, it looks like 12 inches of snowfall, with higher amounts right at the crest. Also note the lower amounts down toward Mammoth.

Snowfall could last a bit into Sunday morning. Then we see a drier and warmer pattern until the middle of next week. There is a possibility of an even warmer storm at that time. Hopefully not. The models are junk that far out this season.

It should be a Gore-Tex kind of day tomorrow. It will certainly be busier than today, but maybe not as much as last weekend. There’s definitely more room to spread out with increasingly better coverage on the mountain, plus less ice out there. Put your Skigee in your pocket and your head on a swivel and we will see you out there.