Typically at this time of year, I’m hoping more for spring weather and corn than another powder hour. But we don’t get to customize our weather, no matter what my friend Steve says. So when you get a day or two of good quality powder, and mix that with a lot of snow showers and filtered light to preserve the powder and empty slopes the last two mornings…well, then you have to just go hunting for the best powder you can find. The only reason for the hunt was that the last two days have been more of the mini-pow variety. Yesterday the day started with 3-4 inches of hero powder. This morning we added another 3-4 inches of champagne powder.
The ideal locations this morning were the ones that saw little traffic yesterday, creating untracked snow that was nearly boot top deep. Generally speaking we had our best success with lower angle slopes and in the trees. That said, in the morning, it was easy to pick the low hanging fruit from Sympathy Face, Sunday School, Rolls and Knolls and Gunners Knob. As usual, you can note the lack of mention of Summit runs, which I am sure were good. But with the top of the mountain fogged in, we focused on the lower mountain. Goggles are great but “floaters” not so much.
The snow showers continued through the morning, very heavy at times, with temperatures in the teens. We played much of the morning all around Roundhouse, Scott, Lakeview and Sherwood and never had a bad run. Some were just not as good as the others. The depth was perfect for pow cruising near Powerline. It felt deeper, but not bottomless over at Chute Zero. Although the surface looked smooth, there were still ruts below waiting to instantly crank your skis around.
Toward the noon hour, the sun was starting to make more frequent appearances and temperatures rose into the twenties. There were brief moments of hot pow, followed by longer sessions of cooked powder. As is typical of Friday afternoons, people began arriving in earnest to start their weekend. Typically you expect traffic on the hill to dwindle in the afternoon, but not on Fridays. There were a lot of cars inbound for the weekend as I left this afternoon. It’s Winter Wondergrass weekend, so probably more traffic than usual.
Looking ahead to the weekend, it’s going to still be chilly. Saturday will be partly cloudy to start the day, with increasing wind and clouds through the day as a rapidly weakening weather system moves in for Sunday. Taking a look at the forecast trend GIF for snowfall Sunday over the last 6 runs, this thing is falling apart. If I had to call it, expect dust on crust for Sunday. At this point it would be better if it continued to vaporize and gave us a sunny Sunday.
There are no parking reservations for the weekend. But take heed, the word on the street is that the Winter Wondergrass venue is occupying 700 parking spaces on the other side of the shiny boxes. It will not be a good weekend to arrive casually late at the mountain.
Looking at the weather trend in the longer term, we get warmer and drier starting Monday. Hopefully we can get into a good corn cycle with warming days and freezing nights as quickly as possible. Yesterday, some of the models tried to bring in another storm about 12 days out, which is totally Fantasyland. Those hopes were already disappearing in today’s model runs.
Everything Has A Cost
It finally happened. The official announcement has been made declaring that April 28th will be the last day of the season for Alpine Meadows. Fortunately, if you have been reading consistently, we started giving you a heads up on that a couple of weeks ago, softening the blow.
There’s a time where I would have really been not happy about such an announcement. I pinned it down today. It goes back to where I was still a public school teacher, skiing only on weekends, holidays and occasional appointments with Doctor White. In those days, it was a struggle to reach 65 to 75 days of skiing each season. But that is not where I am at in this point in my life as a reverse ski bum. By the time Alpine Meadows closes, I should be at 160 days for the season.
Last week, I talked about the financial implications of a very slow start to the ski season: high snowmaking costs and low visitation during the Christmas holiday season put a huge dent in the cash flow for ski areas. All of the hoopla over the “Spring Skiing Capital” and being open until Memorial Day will not do much to recover that income. The official ops blog mentions that Alpine Meadows was open six weeks longer than usual last season, staying open until the 4th of July weekend. That left them in a lurch when it came to finishing mountain maintenance projects last summer. I also mentioned that a few weeks ago.
I’m not hip to everything that they have planned for this summer, but it’s easy to notice that dead and dying trees are all over the mountain. Over the last few weeks, you may have noticed a lot of pink ribbons around trees that are slated for removal. Typically it is far easier to remove those trees while there is still snow on the ground, as then you can drag them down the hill rather than using a helicopter. You should not be surprised to see Lakeview and Scott leaving the schedule sooner than you may like, as there are a lot of pink ribbons there.
I know there was a time when there was competition between Alpine Meadows and NAW Valley. They were driven to keep terrain open as long as possible, as that was a driver for both daily ticket sales and pass sales. With both mountains owned by Alterra, that competitive drive is no longer there. The tradeoff for those shiny boxes that give you access to more lifts than you can ski in a day is a shorter season. The tradeoff for having an Ikon pass that gives you access to a world of ski areas is that our local mountain closes sooner.
I don’t plan on skiing much at NAW Valley once Alpine Meadows closes. You know I am not a fan of walking through the fake village to get to the Funitel, to ride to the part of the mountain I want to ski. It’s not so bad when I can take the shiny boxes to the top of KT and ski to Headwall. In the past, seasonal locker holders at Alpine were offered temporary lockers over at NAW Valley. None will be available this year. It sounds like I am going to start biking and camping season in May instead of skiing and that will be okay. It’s going to hurt my stats on the leaderboard. Oh well.
Title credit today goes to Andrew Pitcairn
…..sigh….
Those were the days, my friend.
We thought they’d never end.
We’d ski and dance forever and a day.
If Granite does stay open longer than your pessimism of an earlier post, will that change your biking/camping plans?
I would think so. Especially given “Thirteen feet of snow in March!”
Friends don’t censor friends comments, let the UA audience decide for themselves where they stand on the ongoing SAG-SRM climate engineering operations overhead.
Oh hello Steve! How are you?
Tip going forward ,”editing” a comment is the same thing as censoring it.
🙃
I can’t remember Granite staying open much into May no matter how much snow there is plus if snow gets low there is a creek crossing the runout back to the chair.