The parking lot was not full, but there seemed to be more skiers and snowboarders on the hill than I would have expected for a Tuesday. The morning session was a tale of two slopes. The overnight grooming crew did an excellent and thorough job creating a good number of corduroy trails down the mountain from the tops of all lifts. The rest of the mountain sported rather large moguls.
A thin layer of clouds greeted us this morning, but it burned off by mid-morning leaving a nice sunny sky. Groomed slopes were the trails used by most people in the early morning. I thought there were just a few too many people on the groomed areas, and they seemed to be skiing or boarding a little too fast for my taste. I noted a few people just heading straight down Sunspot from the top to bottom without making a turn. The groomed trails appeared overcrowded because very few people were venturing off-piste. This improved later in the morning as some of us began to seek off-piste slopes.
Tower 19 and other south facing slopes were pretty firm first thing in the morning, and not really pleasant, but north facing slopes held a packed powder surface. Most of the packed powder slopes have been well skied the past few days and are covered with rather large moguls. I found D7 and Waterfall to have a nice packed winter surface dotted with good sized moguls. They tend to test my skills.
Rolls and Knolls was pleasant, and certain sections of Gunner’s Knob did not disappoint. You will get a good workout driving through Pygmy Forest, and Lower Palisades under the closed Alpine Bowl Chair.
I did not venture over to Sherwood, Lakeview, or Scott today, but the early afternoon report was that their slopes softened and offered up some very nice skiing in the sunshine. Early in the morning they would have been fairly firm, but they softened in the afternoon. Expect very firm conditions there tomorrow morning.
What does one do when skiing is very good and there is no need to stop? A person stops and heads into the locker room, or lodge, in search of a quiet place to sit and make parking reservations. Someone could write a pretty funny play describing the antics that were at play in our locker room at noon. Today was a particularly difficult day to make parking reservations because of the coming holiday week. A number of daily skiers were in the locker room seeking a quiet place to concentrate on their phones, in an effort to obtain a free parking space for the coming nine day holiday period.
On the other hand, there were even more people trying to distract those of us concentrating on our phones. Of course, they had no reason to be quiet. In fact, they seemed to be joyful in their attempts to distract us. In addition, when someone successfully obtained a free space for a particular day, they had to yell out their accomplishments as if they just won the Super Bowl.
The good news is that it appeared to be that all of us who were attempting to get free parking reservations for the nine day holiday period were successful. We were able to negotiate the multiple error messages that popped up, requiring more than nine attempts to obtain the reservation.
According to the weather report, we are expecting a good dumping of snow to freshen up the slopes tomorrow and tomorrow night.
Enjoy your day,
Andy
Yes, I had to move far away from those people that seemed to enjoy distracting the easily distracted. After moving away, I was joined by another person talking through the whole process. Then there were the friends that texted me during the process saying “Got it!”
I counted about 15 error messages during the making of 9 reservations. That’s about the same number I got last week making only two reservations. It seems like they may have upgraded the server in preparation for today’s blast.
Something to enjoy is that we will not have to take a “reservation break” next Tuesday. This whole charade is dumb.
Funny (not really) to have to stop skiing to get on your phone to try to get parking reservations to go skiing. I wish the whole parking reservation nonsense would just go away!
I managed to get everyday at Alpine, but only Tuesday-Friday at Palisades. It was definitely the most stressed I’ve been making reservations due to the storm cycle coming in early next week.
I am wondering why you would be getting them at both places?
If I decide to go to one over the other based on friends/planned, lift openings, etc.
Returning from an enjoyable and uncrowded morning at Mt Rose I stopped at the Tahoe Vista Safeway exactly at noon, logged onto their wifi and while shopping reserved nine days of parking at Alpine with only a brief glitch. Back in my car with a bag of groceries 12 minutes later.
There seems to be a great deal of frustration with the compliance to the parking reservation system from a network systems performance and because of the element of change. The 2023 Placer County management plan for parking reservations (https://www.placer.ca.gov/9520/County-announces-Tahoe-parking-changes) effects thousands of people. BASIC QUESTION FOR PLACER COUNTY AND PALISADES: Is the parking reservation system yielding the desire results?
1) Are there measurable and verified records establish for baseline comparison of past to mandated plan performance? What is the measure of desired plan performance?
2) Where, who and how are traffic and parking records being measured for 2024 to document this new mandate?
3) What criteria has been established for successful performance of the mandated management plan?
4) There seems to be an assumed public transit linkage and coordination. How valid is this assumption in actuality? Has Placer County integrated their regional parking resources and multimodal transportation resources to facilitate traffic reduction? What is the performance of these resource integrations on parking and traffic.
5) Who and when will evaluate the 2024 traffic and parking metrics for confirmation of plan improvement relative to the baseline records, measurable plan objectives and any recommended revision(s)?
Best time for a week to do what you have been avoiding for a while. It will make it very pleasurable in contrast to what is coming. White makes green but green is also a eupherism for puke !
Like some others after an initial glitch I was able to reserve all 9 days at Alpine by 12:15. It seemed to work better on my iPad than my iPhone which just would not connect from my home WiFi.
Perhaps AMC should cut down a few more old growth trees and build a special and highly marketed Parking Reservation Lounge (naturally only for holders of the Base Pass Plus or better)? The WiFi would be configured to only work when mean wind speeds over the crest were blowing <10kts. Think of the fun!