Heckafun!

The transition from spring to instant winter was nothing short of amazing. I’ll admit I wasn’t all that excited about the possibilities. But somewhere around 15 inches of snow fell overnight at Alpine Meadows and temperatures crashed rapidly overnight, so the quality of that new snow was quite good given that we are into late March. But today was the day that proved you can go from great spring corn to one of the best powder days of the season overnight.

Noting that parking reservations were completely sold out for today, and the Pain McShlonkey was going on over at Palisades; I did the rational thing and headed to the mountain nice and early, avoiding any traffic or parking woes. That allowed for a breakfast at Treats and a strategic planning session in the locker room. By 8:30, it was looking really hectic at the base area, with the line for Summit already out of the corral. I heard that the skiing was exceptional there, but visibility poor. It’s generally not my first choice on pow days just due to the line.

There was a little delay with getting Gentian Gully and the Promised Land open. That was fine as we picked some of the lower hanging fruit first. That first run down Gentian Gully may have been the best of the season, which was way beyond many of our expectations. We had planned to do a second lap, but the line at Subway was long and then the Scott line looked really long. So we picked off a few more pieces of low hanging fruit before heading to Lakeview, which had a lot of tracks. That called us to Outer Outer, where just a few entry tracks existed. We had to do two laps just to make sure it really was good. I did manage to hit bottom there in a few steep zones, but still an excellent powder experience for late March.

Editor’s Note: Outer Outer is out of bounds terrain with significant avalanche dangers and is generally not serviced by Ski Patrol. It is definitely terrain for experts and requires a lengthy walk back to a lift. Many routes end on private property along Courchevel Road. Be respectful.

One thing that helped today was that most of the mountain was shrouded in low clouds and snow showers. That kept the powder from getting cooked by the sun. I did find some heavier pow near Reily’s around noon. We don’t often get those conditions for spring powder. Today was a rare treat.

There was another run or two in there before the noonish hour, and suddenly it seemed like the whole mountain was moguls. Not to mention there were a lot of people. Did i say a lot of people? You know there are a lot of people on the mountain when you get a notification like this on your phone:

So I called it early today. Sometime you have a streak of runs that are so good, you don’t want to sabotage those positive memories of the day by taking too many runs that consist of moguls and crowded slopes after that.

We are not done with winter yet. Snow showers will continue through today, and then the main low pressure system moves in overnight. Potentially that brings another 9 to 13 inches of snow to enjoy tomorrow. Colder temperatures will prevail through the week. Smaller crowds should also be the norm starting Monday. Another system is expected for the Wednesday to Friday timeframe. Then two more systems seem to fall in behind that into the first week of April. If they are anything like today, I am happy to delay spring skiing.

About Those Parking Reservations

I hesitate to say it, but today is one of those days where the parking reservations most likely made a difference. Hidden Valley was being utilized by about 10:20 and it’s probable that a lot more people would have been circling like vultures and causing gridlock had reservations not been there today to make people think twice. There’s a lot of times where it just has seemed not necessary, but then you get a big powder day like today that really brings the crowds.

As much as I have not been a fan of making the reservations each week, the truth is that I have been able to get free reservations both days of each weekend at Alpine Meadows since the program started in December. It is an interruption to my day each Tuesday where I have to stop skiing long enough to make sure I had good service to assure success. And yes it is frustrating to have glitches and stalls during the process. But I hope there are no changes to the program for next season, as I fear the next step would be to implement paid reservations for all weekends for everyone. That’s what was just announced for A-Basin for next season. That would be terrible for ski bums like myself living on a retired teacher’s pension.

So here I am saying it. Since we know that there will not be meaningful reductions in pass sales, social media posts and short term rentals for next season – let’s stick with the parking reservation system. I have learned to live with it.

See you out there tomorrow.