A Matter Of Preference and $3B

Whether or not today was a good day of skiing or a great day of skiing is totally a matter of personal preferences. I took some really great runs today, and I also took some that I prefer to forget. One thing that just about everybody agrees on, it was better than yesterday. It’s not that the new snow was better today, because it was not.

Yesterday the snow was quite wet and heavy, given the 27° temperatures in the morning. While the ground temperatures were still cold yesterday, that snow had traveled through some warmer upper air layer that made each flake a soggy mess. Today’s new snow seemed drier on the surface, but a combination of warmer overnight temperatures and strong winds packed the snow to create extremely variable conditions. Yesterday, conditions got worse, as temperatures warmed and rain started falling. Today, most of the precipitation fell as snow, and high winds buffed out a lot of terrain. Conditions actually improved as the day went on.

An early warmup run down Weasel, with two inches of new snow over a previously groomed run, was smooth and velvety. Eventually we headed toward Sherwood to see how things were on Reily’s. They were not good. It was the kind of deep cement that tortures every joint that is connected to your skis. Not wanting to break trail on Ray’s Rut, I did a hike to Powerline. It was worse. It was at this point I declared it to be a groomer day, as I don’t have the knees of a 20 year old anymore. That was all good for a short bit.

After lunch, as people noticed that Summit was being prepped, they deserted Roundhouse and waited in line. This opened things up and hot laps of wind buff on Rock Garden and the small bumps on Yellow Trail were fast and fun. We also sampled Werners, Charity and Red Ridge, finding that all had great wind buff once most of the traffic moved to Summit. I never went to Summit, as the visibility looked awful, and the line was out the corral…on a Monday. But people kept going back so I imagine something must have been good. Based on traffic patterns, it was Wolverine and the Face that people were liking. Update: people reported that sticking to areas with trees was better for visibility ie North Peril

I had a lot of questions today about why we continue to have these snow showers and what happened to the colder air that was supposed to lower snow levels again. That atmospheric river basically stalled over California due to high pressure over the Southwest. Looking at the graphic above, I added an arrow so you can see that the same flow that is causing flooding near Santa Barbara and Ventura continues from the south right into Tahoe. Fortunately we only get a whole lot of snow showers and elevated snow levels. We are lucky to not be dealing with flooding.

There’s no mention of a sunny day until Saturday. After this week is over, the pattern seems to shift to a drier mode for a bit.

The Sun Shines On Lakeview

The sun came out briefly today and shone on Lakeview, and it is looking quite nice, and well covered. A couple of weeks ago, the official operations blog noted that 2+ feet of snow was needed to open Lakeview. The marketing email today claimed that 3.5 feet of snow has fallen in the last seven days. It does take time to prep the upper and lower ramps, as well as the whole ridge at Lakeview. Hopefully that process will start very soon, as this weekend promises to be even busier than last weekend with new snow being shown on every newscast over the last 7 days. It’s going to be interesting to see how badly the reservation chokes tomorrow at noon….and then there is “Super Tuesday” next week, where reservations become available for the whole Presidents Week and “some big ski race” weekend.

Three Billion Dollars: What Will Alterra Mountain Company Do?

Alterra Mountain Company, announced this week that they had secured 3 billion dollars of new funds to invest in their portfolio. AMC is the private entity that currently owns Alpine Meadows, Palisades Tahoe, a number of other ski areas and the Ikon Pass. Immediately, members of ski media started hypothesizing what they thought AMC would be doing with those funds. Would they purchase more ski areas? Would they invest it dumb window dressing like the Base To Base gondumbla? Would they be smart and invest in employee retention by investing in employee housing initiatives and livable wages? Stuart Winchester penned a piece today at The Storm Skiing Journal on the topic. (If you’re not a subscriber, you will need to wait a few days to read the whole article)

One answer did come today, as Alterra announced that they had closed on a deal to purchase Arapahoe Basin in Colorado. As one might imagine, that is a very controversial purchase. Generally speaking, Alterra Mountain Company does not have a good track record when it comes to keeping the spirit of these smaller non-destination resorts, like Alpine Meadows. Here’s the corporate line the always say with each purchase:

At each destination, Alterra Mountain Company leaders are empowered to be decisive, creative, and bold in order to retain each mountain’s authentic character. Recognizing the innate value of the unique culture found at each of the mountain communities, Alterra Mountain Company’s goal is to preserve, sustain and support its two most important resources: the mountains and the people who live and play in them.

We all know how that turns out, as we have now been living the devaluation of Alpine Meadows culture since 2010. Nobody wants to see their home mountain be assimilated by the Borg. But the reality is, Alterra desperately needs another mountain or two in the NorCal market. I wrote a whole piece on that a couple of years ago. Since that time, a couple of those resorts, Dodge Ridge and Bear Valley, have been snapped up. I probably need to do an updated version of that article.

Stuart Winchester suggested in his piece today that Homewood would be a great addition to the Alterra portfolio. It’s true that Homewood does need a rescue, as it’s been floundering under JMA ownership. But Stuart is from the east coast, and therefore completely out of touch when it comes to traffic in the North Tahoe region. Adding Homewood to the Alterra portfolio would only add to the traffic problems along the Highway 89 and 28 corridors.

There’s still a number of options out there that do make sense for Alterra. Again, you don’t want to wish this on any little resort. But the sad thing is that some of these areas will not survive without an influx of capital. The top of the list for me at this point:

• Pulling together a trio of Donner summit resorts: Boreal, Soda Springs and Donner Ski Ranch. They could easily be connected and turned into one larger resort with easy access from Highway 80, keeping many visitors out of Truckee and the busy Highway 89 corridor.
• Sierra At Tahoe is a resort that could thrive with a solid investment of capital. Again, it would draw a number of Ikon pass holders out of the North Tahoe area.
• In a distant third would be Mount Rose. Why third choice? Mount Rose currently has a very successful operational plan and is likely to survive without an intervention. Also, adding Mount Rose to the Ikon pass could attract even more Reno skiers and riders to Palisades and Alpine Meadows.

Lastly, we hope they are not earmarking any part of that 3 billion dollars for “out of the boots” amenities like a silly water park or mountain coaster. We don’t want to have to slay that dragon again.