The Day I Needed

Today was the spring day I needed, because today I needed to be out in the warm air and skiing with friends.

There was some really good skiing all around the mountain today. It was one of those days where you had to purposefully seek out someplace that was not so good, just so you could really appreciate what we have. The groomed runs were totally dialed in across the mountain this morning, both in quantity and quality. I may have set a personal best, making 18 turns in the creamy goodness that was Sunspot this morning. Then I ripped some huge arcs down Charity and Kangaroo Ridge to get back to Summit and do it again.

I was a little bit concerned about a potential for sticky-ness today, with temperatures reaching over 50° on the mountain. I made an early exit from my ski group and headed to Sherwood pretty quickly. The Sherwood groomer was in fine shape at 9:45 and I was proud of myself for timing it right. That was until I saw Danny and the boys from AMRA returning to Sherwood from High Traverse. Doh! But honestly, my mind was a bit cluttered this morning. Apparently High Traverse was really good, as patrol did the right thing and let it cook for a few days before opening the terrain. It’s okay. I’ll catch it tomorrow, as patrol closed it early today to prevent ruts.

Instead I got right to work, taking some laps on various aspects of Sherwood Face, plus Chute Zero. My goal was to smooth out some of the semi-frozen chunder left from the last few days of slushy skiing. With the help of a few friends, we made some good progress. I also noted that a few other people followed our lead. With our efforts and another thaw and freeze cycle it should be even better tomorrow.

We toured the rest of the mountain after lunch and found a variety of conditions, mostly good, some not so good as the stickies began to appear. In general, groomers and well skied areas had less issues with sticky-ness. Sometimes it seemed entirely random. Today I experienced an entirely new phenomenon, skiing Twilight Zone around 1pm. Twilight Zone is one of the last places to retain firmness at Lakeview, due to its somewhat north facing aspect. The left edge of the run still had corduroy, and it was still firm. The thing was that the top quarter inch had gotten sticky sitting untracked it the sun. So it was sticky firm pack snow. It was weird and completely unexpected. Moral of the story, it had not corned up yet.

Theoretically, the air temperatures will get very near freezing tonight at Alpine Meadows, so we should see a decent freeze at ground level. That would be the key to more corn development and less stickies tomorrow. I hope that is the way things pan out. We have two, maybe three, more days of False Spring Number 4 before another storm moves in for the weekend. Snow levels remain fairly high on Friday before dropping to about 5000 feet on Saturday. Most of the snowfall for this system is expected during the day on Saturday. As of today, the model runs are showing about 4 inches of snowfall in Tahoe. Being four days out in the models, take that with a grain of salt. Sunday looks to have continuing snow showers. Monday, spring starts anew.

She’s A Good Girl

Our golden retriever, Rossi, crossed the rainbow bridge today after being diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. Yes, Rossi was short for Rossignol. She loved to go skiing in the summer months around Alpine Meadows, Mount Lola and near Carson Pass. Thanks to all of my ski friends today that helped ease me through the pain of losing a good dog.