A Short Transitional Period Before The Storm

The mountain sure felt empty today, relative to the number of people on the mountain this weekend. We were back to more of a midweek normal, with no lift lines to speak of and room to maneuver on the slopes. I’m not complaining about the weekend at all. By arriving at the mountain extra early and leaving a bit early, it was easy to avoid traffic. By paying attention to estimated lift times on the Palisades app, and keeping an open mind, you could avoid most lift lines.

That said, all of those people on the mountain did leave an impact. There are no more stashes of powder to be found without leaving the boundaries or a serious hike. Today, I expected that I would be skiing mostly groomed trails, given the spring-like warmth yesterday afternoon. The grooming team is back on their “A” game, especially when it comes to quantity. After running a couple of months with minimal grooming, it seems that things are now fully staffed and it shows. Alpine Bowl is now like a 20 lane highway, as are all of the runs lower on the front side of the mountain. Grooming is now regular at Sherwood and Lakeview. We have even seen some bonus runs groomed such as the Summit bull wheel and Solar Flare. Solar Flare took the cake this morning for creamy goodness, being the most south facing portion of Alpine Bowl.

Off piste the conditions were variable, and by that, I mean very variable. Most off piste terrain is now pretty loaded with moguls, some of them being quite large. Some of them skied excellent, and some not so excellent. In the category of excellent today: Palisades, High Yellow and Mid-Yellow and D7. In the not great at all category was God’s Knob, Fall Line and D6. The great off piste terrain was winter packed snow and chalk. The worst areas consisted of sun crusted moguls and ice.

I never made it to Sherwood today, which makes three days in a row. The last two days, Sherwood offered some of the longest lines on the mountain. Today, I kept running “test sections”, which are the few south facing areas of Summit and Roundhouse that give a clue to how Sherwood is softening. One of those test sections is Upper Weasel One. None of them had achieved greatness by early afternoon. It’s okay, as I spent nearly a week straight skiing Sherwood almost exclusively. I did do a lap on Lakeview yesterday, after avoiding the weekend lines. The top of Outer Limits is pretty thin, with quite a bit of brush peeking through.

Fortunately more snow is on the way. That storm will also result in a new storm of people coming to Tahoe.

A Good Sized Refresh On The Way

We have one more day of almost spring-like weather tomorrow, with temperatures just slightly colder. Wednesday looks cloudy, with snow beginning to fall by evening. The next storm has some similar characteristics to the last one. It’s way too early to pin down timing on anything because this is another deep low without a lot of guidance. Here’s the GIF that shows how the low pressure system moves in from the Pacific and then sits just off the coast, never really moving across the Sierra. That puts us into a southerly flow state that generally results in higher snow levels. Looking at the GEFS ensembles, the low never moves inland. Other models do eventually move it inland.

That said, the conservative GEFS ensembles are currently thinking that 30-40 inches of snow is possible by Tuesday. The Euro and Canadian models are a bit more brash today in showing a potential for 60 inches of snow by Tuesday. So far during this less predictable season, the more conservative GEFS has been the more accurate model.

Is It Tuesday Already?

Not only is it Tuesday tomorrow, it is the dreaded Super Tuesday. It’s the day where we are going to be forced into the terrible task of reserving 9 days of parking within a period of 2-3 minutes, all while competing with thousands of others from the region trying to accomplish the same feat. I’ve heard a few people say they just gave up and shelled out $270 to the Borg to avoid joining into the fray. Another friend said they have to skip skiing tomorrow, all so they can stay home and open 36 windows on their 42 inch monitor, as a part of some freaky strategy to get parking reservations. I can proudly say, I have never ever done this sort of thing to get tickets for Taylor Swift, the World Series or a Black Friday deal on a PS5. It’s just nutty and the right thing to do would be to just skip it. Unfortunately, because visiting family always want to come on holiday weekends, we must participate in this nonsense.

There’s been a lot of talk this week about strategies for Super Tuesday. Should you go for the Presidents weekend days first, or the World Cup weekend days first? Or is it better to secure the weekdays first to have a better chance at some success? Of course, you should not share your strategy here, as that would only increase your competition.

Best of luck to all. There were a lot of sad people today after the Niners loss to the Chiefs in the Super Bowl. I am willing to bet there will be even greater sadness tomorrow at about 7:15pm. That’s the time where thousands of people will have to decide if they want to pony up $30 a day to the Borg to go skiing and riding, or if they would rather spend the week like a nervous chicken, pecking at the keyboard every few minutes, looking for leftover scraps. THIS IS INSANITY AND SHOULD NOT BE NORMALIZED.

Is It Working?

Does this parking reservation thing really have an impact, other than making many of us hate Alterra with every cell in our body? The answer is maybe, in a tiniest sense, on a few of the busiest days. We are not seeing those days where 20,000 cars are showing up for the roughly 6000 parking spaces. But those days have been few and far between in this somewhat lower than average snow season.

For anybody that has been doing this drive just about every day of the ski season for many years, traffic is still an issue. You still have to be willing to get to the resort more than an hour before lifts roll. There’s still gridlock in areas around North Tahoe each weekend morning and on powder days. Locals still can’t get to work without a “super commute”. You can only laugh when you get alerts like this one sent to your phone:

Theoretically all of this is being done to convince all of us that we should consider using public transportation and shuttles to get to the mountain. That would allow us to avoid the hassle of making parking reservations. But for all of this hoopla about the availability of alternative means of getting to the mountain, nobody seems interested in making that process easier than driving to the mountain.

It’s difficult to find complete information about both public transportation and some of the resort shuttle options. Looking at the Palisades Tahoe website, you can’t easily find information on the Sherwood Shuttle. You can only find it by using the search tool. If you’re looking for information on the Park N Ride program from Truckee, only dates are listed, not specific times. Then there’s the problem that public transport only brings you to Olympic Valley or the bottom of Alpine Meadows Road. Let’s look at a hypothetical example, coming from my end of Truckee:

Segment	Time
Wait time for Tart Connect	45 minutes (currently estimated at 67 minutes!)
Travel time to Truckee High School Park N Ride	13 minutes
Wait time for Park N Ride Bus	15 minutes
Travel time to Olympic Valley	40 minutes (accounts for some traffic)
Walk to B2B & wait time	10 minutes
Travel time to Alpine Meadows on B2B	16 minutes
Total Estimated Time	2 Hours and 19 minutes

Yup, there are a ton of variables out there. This is just a sample of what it could take. I know that driving my own vehicle will take far less time, as long as I leave appropriately early. Last weekend, my drive to and from Truckee averaged 32 minutes each way. I ended up with some extra time at the mountain to enjoy breakfast with friends and wax my skis.

I’m still wondering whether the real motive for parking reservations is to justify paid parking for all as the “only solution” that will reduce weekend traffic…

Another Avenue For Traffic Reduction

Then there is the other thing that might affect how many people show up at the mountain, and that is completely transparent reporting of mountain operations that is presented in a timely manner. Using last Saturday as an example. The weather forecasts were very clear that winds were going to be a problem for some lifts. Being an east wind, it was very likely to cause Summit to be put on windhold, as well as some lifts over at Palisades.

The messaging from Palisades Tahoe was not clear about this. By not clearly stating that Summit was going to start the day on wind hold, as well as ABC and a number of lifts over there, more people showed up at the mountain than what was the reasonable carrying capacity for that morning. That also put far more cars on the road during that morning commute than needed to be there. Some number of people might have decided to forgo the trip had there been more transparency. Yes, eventually the winds did subside and those lifts opened, but that is not always the case. Often it goes the other way when increasing winds close lifts.

So here’s to hoping for more transparent communication that keeps cars off the road when full operations are probably not going to happen. It’s reasonable to expect that there will be mountain operations closures due to wind or other foreseeable circumstances. It’s also reasonable to expect complete transparency so the Smith family doesn’t jump into their car at 7:30am in Roseville on a day where an east wind of 60 mph is keeping Summit on hold.

See you out there tomorrow for another beautiful midweek day of skiing…