Updated: Water Is Wet

Let’s get a couple of things out of the way immediately. It’s a holiday weekend. The marketing blast this morning was that about 17 inches of new snow fell in the last 24 hours. Last night, they announced that all parking was sold out. There’s a couple of key lifts at Alpine Meadows that are not open for the season yet.

Consequently, traffic was an issue again today. I left 15 minutes earlier and it still took more than twice as long to get to the mountain as it did yesterday. While it was never stop and go, it was a constant stream of cars from the Truckee side. On the Tahoe City side, the NAW Valley traffic backed up beyond Alpine Meadows Road and as far as the eye could see. While it’s possible that there was some incremental improvement due to parking reservations, all of the usual social posts were made about traffic problems today. I have a theory that announcing that all parking was sold out may have added to the traffic. While casual visitors may assume all parking is created equal, nobody that has been to Alpine Meadows before wants to park at Deer Park or Hidden Valley. On the other side, few people hope to get front row parking at Sno Ventures. Therefore, there is still a rush for “good” parking. Water is wet, which we all know.

Yes, there were lift lines, and they were long, longer or longest. I’m not just complaining about the long lines themselves, it’s the chaos that extends beyond the corral that often gets to me. When the line starts to get way out of the corral, like when Scott is out to the Chalet, you have to be more aggressive than I like to be to establish where you are in “the blob.” Then there’s the lack of line control. Generally speaking, the alternating merge thing works, until you get to the singles line. Singles just wander out like lost lambs, making everyone wonder “What’s this guy doing?” Some people just need direction. Long lines on a holiday weekend with hugely oversold passes? Yep, water is wet.

Also, Water Is Wet

I’m telling ya, the snow the last two days has been really good. First we had that amazing chalky day on Friday. Then yesterday, even though it was raining at the bottom of Alpine Meadows Road, the new snow that was falling was almost hero powder. No it was not the lightest snow ever, but it was super fun skiing right into the afternoon. Also…far less people, no traffic and much smaller lines. I am not certain what factors lead to that happening. But I sure felt lucky yesterday!

But today, water was truly wet. The temperatures were just a smidge higher, but the water content in that snow was much higher. Today’s new snow was indeed true Sierra cement. As long as you were making first tracks, it was okay. After that it turned into Insta-moguls on steeper pitches and cobblestone paving on groomed runs. It was the kind of snow that made you wonder if you really were better off taking a five minute ski run in sludge, only to return to a 15 minute lift line.

Not only was the snow wet, so was the air this morning. Relative humidities were running 100% for much of the day. So it was foghorn weather for much of the morning with only brief glimpses of the sun until around noon. That fog made visibility poor, especially at the top of the mountain. But it still was wet at the bottom of the mountain, where frequent goggle wipes were necessary. That humidity also was a factor in the wetness of the snow, and any clothing that did not have a high waterproof rating.

I’m glad I went today. I had one glorious run this morning. Scott opened, and very quickly had a maintenance hold. We were going to skip it, but then like a miracle, the chair spun up. The closed sign was removed and we got in line before many people noticed. Once at the top, the sun poked out onto Bobby’s run for a few minutes, which was spread with a thin layer of cream cheese and almost no tracks. I am pretty sure I heard the birds, or angels, singing. By the time we lapped back down to Scott, the line ran out to the Chalet. I chose to tap out pretty early today.

In the department of new stuff, there’s been a couple of additions. The Kangaroo lift spun for the first time of the season yesterday. While it is primarily being used for race training, Nick’s run is open to the public. After coaches abandoned race training yesterday, we managed a couple of short powder laps on the Roo. That same powder was not there today. It was a hot mess of people that had no idea how to ski cream cheese. Watching the struggle fest from the lift, I couldn’t help thinking of those videos of cheese wheel races in the United Kingdom. If you have seen the videos, they involve a lot of people falling over each other to chase a wheel of cheese down a steep hill.

Also new today, Scott Chute opened for the first time of the season. The top part looked pretty good on the skiers left side, but the bottom part still looked quite spicy. I’ll wait.

Water Will Be Wet, Again

We have a brief patch of sunny and warmer weather for Monday and early Tuesday. That is good news for people that enjoy seeing while they are skiing, or when they are driving home over Donner Summit with 80,000 other visitors.

Tuesday into Wednesday, another storm rolls in to Tahoe. The good new is that the latest forecasts have trended a bit colder. Yesterday, the snow levels looked like they could jump to 8000 feet during the storm. The last thing we need is rain and a possible ice crust layer in the snowpack. So that is hopefully the way it will happen, colder.

Still, the snow levels could be right about 6000-6500 which is just below the base level for Alpine Meadows. That means we would again have that “water is wet” feeling. As of today all of the models are pretty consistent in showing 3-5 inches of snow by Wednesday evening.

Update: Today’s models bring back the warm to this storm, with snow levels back up to 8000 feet for what falls on Tuesday, possibly back below base level by the time Wednesday morning rolls around. Snow amounts have been reduced to just a couple of inches of accumulation.

Another storm is potentially out there for the next weekend time frame, and it has hung in the models for about 5 days now, so it could be a thing. We will have to keep our eyes on that one later this week.

Sherwood Beckons

When will Sherwood open in the burning question of the day. Without being able to see Sherwood from the front side of the mountain, it is tough to tell. Typically by this time of the season, Hotter Wheels is open to the top, and you can check out the state of Sherwood by taking the Return Road. But this is not any normal year, so I called in a favor from my friend Ian, whom lives in Alpine Peaks. Here’s some photos from this afternoon. We have certainly seen Sherwood run with far less snow.

The big issue is building out the load platform. There is a lot of snow farming potential at the bottom of Sherwood though. Then there is the building of Return Road, which really is not a road at all. Try hiking that in the summer time! Sherwood would certainly have alleviated the crowds and lines today. For those not in the know, Sherwood is typically the next lift to open. Lakeview takes huge amounts of snow to get open.

To Beep Or Not To Beep?

Avalanches are still on the minds of anyone that is in the mountains this week. Over the last two days, I have seen more avalanche beacons on the hill that I have ever seen. There’s a lot of different feelings about that, some of which I mentioned the other day. Having a bunch of untrained people with beacons on the hill could become a liability in the event a search becomes necessary.

I wanted to commend Liz Worgan for an excellent point she made in the official Ops Blog the other day. Mostly likely you are already carrying a device that allows people to locate you. A lot of people I know are very reluctant to use “apps that track you all over the place.” But Liz did point out that mountain staff could fairly accurately track your whereabouts at a given time if you are actively tracking using the Palisades Tahoe app. It’s not like there’s hundreds of people stuffed in some underground lair following dots around on the screen. But the ability to track a person on demand is a cool thing. In the event of an avalanche, if I reported one of my ski buddies missing, mountain staff would be able to get a decent handle on if they were in the area at the time and where they might be now. That same tech would be useful for losing a kid on the mountain. Honestly, I don’t care whether the mountain knows that I have already skied REDACTED 100 times in the last two weeks.

So there you go, consider forgoing a beacon purchase, unless you are truly planning on skiing in the back country or out of resort. Instead, since you’re probably already carrying your phone, download the Palisades Tahoe app and use the tracking.