Not The Weather We Needed, Not The Ski Day We Wanted

I wish I had some different news. If you were looking for some soft new snow to ski or ride today at Alpine Meadows, you would be disappointed. There was wind aplenty, enough to close most lifts for the day. I am pretty sure that the morning precipitation could have been classified more as sleet than snow, and the 30-40mph wind gusts driving it into every square millimeter of exposed skin did not feel great. That falling sleet made absolutely no difference to the snow surface for skiing and riding. If snow was falling higher on the mountain, it probably never hit the ground until it landed somewhere in Plumas County.

Since the forecast called for a decent amount of snow overnight, a pretty high percentage of Ikon passholders in the region jumped in their cars and headed to Alpine Meadows and Palisades this morning. That caused some near record* lines at Hotter Wheels, which was the top of the mountain today. At its peak this morning, the app reported wait times of 10-20 minutes. Actual users abandoning ship around 10am reported real time experiences around 30-35 minutes for their first two laps.

*Today’s line extended over to the corner of Roundhouse. One time I did see it extend all of the way back to the doors of the breezeway.

With the line at TLC out of the corral at 9am, and masses of people pouring out of the breezeway, we skipped TLC and headed to Meadow to get a few laps in without a line. When the app reports that you have already done TLC 285 times this season, it is easy to just skip it. In one hour, we did our obligatory 5 laps, spread between Meadow and Subway. We discovered that the regular Subway groomer is now there, as were a couple of cuts through the trees that weren’t there on our last green circle day session. Also, I earned a badge, completing the “Easy Rider” challenge. Think positive!

Some Unfortunate Miscommunication

There probably needed to be more immediate, direct and honest communication about expected operations today. We have seen these glitches before, and you might think that there would be a system in place to make sure these things would not happen. For the few percent of the population that still uses the app formerly known as Twitter, the messaging was there. These messages appeared just before 8:00 am today:

But most of America has abandoned the app now known by a big black X. If they were relying on the Palisades Tahoe app, they were getting a different message. Here’s a screenshot from 8:42 am today. (TBT I edited two images together because it did not fit all on one screen capture):

Yes, you are correct, that is a very different message. It is a message of hope. It is a message of “Keep driving to Alpine Meadows!” It is a message of “Maybe Summit will go on windhold but the rest will be open.” It’s a message of “It’s gonna be a powder day, we can’t turn around now!” So people kept coming. When I left about 10:30, they were still streaming in. Some were even lined up to buy a day ticket. I wanted to shout “Don’t do it!” in the general direction of the ticket windows. Still, cars were parking at the end of Lot 4, near what used to be that awesome Alpine Meadows sign. More cars were streaming up the road.

Some might argue that this messaging mistake was intentional. But in this case, I am going to give the benefit of the doubt that the right hand did not know what the left hand was doing. Hopefully it will be better next time, a.k.a. tomorrow.

The sad thing is, we have been trained not to believe the messaging that comes from Palisades Tahoe. I’ve been a pretty good supporter of the official Palisades Tahoe Operations Blog this season. Ninety eight percent of the time, I felt that they have offered valuable information that seemed to be an effort at transparency. But yesterday’s Ops Blog was an entirely different story. Once again, people reverted to calling it the “Excuse Blog” all over social media and various ski forums. It was stuff that we have come to expect from Palisades Tahoe, with all of the standard buzzwords like “rime ice.” Interesting that there was not a mention of wind being the real problem today.

Much of the hullaballoo centered around the wildly popular Headwall lift next door, which has not opened yet this season. Well, the lift has not opened yet, but the terrain has been open for a couple of weeks and people have been skiing it. Yesterday’s ops blog gave a litany of reasons why they still could not open Headwall. Maybe some of them were credible, but many of them were nothing short of excuses. It left me sour, feeling like they were blaming Ski Patrol and mountain ops for not being able to get the work done. One popular vlogger from next door summed it up well. He compared it to arriving at school without your homework saying “I don’t have my homework because the power went out and my printer was out of ink and the internet was down and my mom’s car wouldn’t start, and my locker wouldn’t open so I couldn’t take my book home and also, my dog ate it.”

I know just by mentioning Headwall not being open, I am going to have to moderate some comments today, as people really like that lift next door. So I may as well mention here that over here, we have been asking the same questions about Sherwood. I’m happy that some of the work got done this week. But I am saddened that a reader sent in this photo from this morning, and the wait for Sherwood will continue. Then there’s the no ABC and Yellow midweek. Not running lifts that could be running is a bad look, especially when it really affects the lifties that were hired to run those lifts. How are they supposed to pay rent?

I wish I could say that was the last of the misleading communication, but it’s not. I predicted this would happen when our season was getting off to a very slow start last December. The low numbers of people coming to ski during that time would make it look like the reserved parking plan was working. I told you they would claim it, just like some former president announced “Mission Accomplished!” Yes, people did post that meme on the ski forums yesterday.

There were all sorts of comments on the socials noting that comparing MLK weekend traffic last year to this year was completely inaccurate. Given that the snow was about four times as deep last year, and the entire mountains were open on both sides – it was a completely unfair comparison to a year where conditions are not great, neither mountain is fully open, and you have just experienced two inbounds post-control avalanches. So okay moving on…

How Much Is Open?

Andy’s post yesterday noted the difference in the number of lifts running on the other side versus Alpine Meadows. It’s sad when you look at it that way. But it’s also the reason that many of us selected Alpine Meadows as our home mountain many years ago. The last time I did a deep dive into open terrain, the number was 17% of terrain open during most of the holiday period. Yesterday, I got much more serious about getting stuff into a spreadsheet, the data being pulled from the last master plan for Alpine Meadows.

With the addition of Wolverine Bowl, Kangaroo, Scott and the top of TLC, we are now at 48% of mapped runs now being available at Alpine Meadows. That is a big jump from my last calculations. That is based on only about 760 acres of mapped runs. If you include the “unmapped terrain” in the upper bowls and along High Traverse, most sites report 2400 skiable acres. Based on that we’re at 15% open. Ouch. Then there’s today: 41 acres open with a full upper parking lot.

Looking at lifts, it’s a little tougher to tell exact capacity. The master plan and LiftBlog.com give the design capacities for each lift, but the numbers don’t always match. Then there’s the problem that some of the lifts never run at full speed, for a variety of reasons. Some lifts just don’t attract enough riders to meet their maximum capacity. So giving just a rudimentary estimate, we are somewhere around 70-75% lift capacity on days where everything runs except Sherwood and Lakeview.

What About This Weather?

Can we be done talking about how awesome El Niño is yet? It has not been awesome yet. But there are still weather pundits out there pushing the idea that the “good” El Niño years were “back loaded”, meaning that most of the snowfall occurred later in the snow season. Some have already completely given up on January, and they are already talking about another “jet extension” and a big blob of cold air that could materialize in February. I’ll believe it when I ski it.

This storm suffered the same fate as most this year, the lack of a strong jet stream. I mentioned that two days ago in the context of the storm had lost its subtropical tap. Yeah that would have been the force that drove this storm into the Sierra much faster. Instead, it’s behaved more like a cut off low, spreading bands of rain along the coast and central valley. Some snow is falling along the west slope of the Sierra. But there is not much to drive it past the crest. So we are stuck in the warmer and drier southerly flow on the east side of the low…high winds, not much moisture and higher snow levels.

So there’s more of this on the way. I wish I could tell you it will be different, but I am not seeing that in looking at the models or the automated forecasts. Right now, it looks like we stay in this snow showers mode with potentially strong winds and snow levels running about 6-7k for the new few waves. The point forecast calls for 5 to 9 inches tonight. I’ll believe it when I ski it tomorrow.

Similar systems are now forecast through Wednesday…maybe February will be “the month”. Hopefully.