Let’s Not Normalize Early Closures

It’s here, the final weekend of a 156 day season at Alpine Meadows. The mountain was closed for three of those days, and I chose to skip two days mid season. Yes, there is one more day left, but this is my last regular report for the season. Andy will have the honor of writing a closing day report tomorrow. But before we talk about how things were today, I wanted to talk about not normalizing this early closure thing. If you just want to skip to the skiing and weather report, click here.

Some people have worried that I have developed “too cozy” of a relationship with the management at Alpine Meadows and the neighbor to the north. In a sense, that is somewhat true, in that I have developed friendships with many people that work at the mountain. It actually makes it easier to do what we do here at Unofficial Alpine. Over the past few months, I have mentioned some of the factors that are leading to an early closure this season. Here’s the recap:

• This has not been a blockbuster season financially for Palisades Tahoe. The season started off super slow. We skied for a whole month on just the Hotter Wheels lift. As the holiday season began, Roundhouse finally opened, but we were still only skiing on 6% of the available terrain at Alpine Meadows. It was not a banner holiday season. Once you miss that holiday season, it’s very difficult to regain that lost income.

In recent interview with Jared Smith, CEO of Alterra Mountain Co, in the Colorado Sun, Smith stated that essentially all North American resorts suffered through the holidays this year, but that they made up ground the rest of the season. While that may be true in Utah and Colorado, it probably does not hold true for Tahoe. March was bigger than average, but it was the only month above average for snowfall this season. Somewhere back in Denver, an accountant is nervously tapping their pencil.

• The publicly stated reason for the early closure has to do with Alpine Meadows being open 6 weeks longer than “normal” last year. There’s definitely some grains of truth to the idea that they were not able to get everything done last summer that was scheduled for lift maintenance, trail crew work and facility maintenance. More importantly, there’s a whole lot of employees that had their summer schedule filled with extra work at the mountain. For a few, that added up to some extra income. To many, it meant they missed out on planned vacations, a summer job, time with their family, home maintenance and a slew of other things. I have talked to quite a few that are welcoming a little bit of slack this season.

Personally, I am ready for the break too, after skiing 161 of the last 166 days. Tomorrow is likely my last day of the season, a mediocre season which ended up coming in second place for number of days skied. I’m not planning on skiing either Palisades or Mammoth in the coming weeks. I need to pay attention to my aging parents. I want to learn how to weld. I want to remodel my camper van to accommodate bikes and I need to build a fence and some new gates at home. I am ready to let go of this particular season and do some camping and biking.

That said, I don’t want to normalize Alpine Meadows closing at the end of April. During the first 47 years of Alpine Meadows history, the mountain stayed open as long as you could ski to the Summit lift. Typically that meant until late May, and occasionally into June. It was under JMA ownership that we first saw closures during the month of April, because thats when many people stopped skiing. When Alpine Meadows joined up with Squaw Valley under KSL Capital, the excuse was that “Alpine Meadows always closes before NAW Valley”. I have said it before, the lack of competition between the two mountains is usually not a good thing when it comes to creating a better experience for those of us on either side of the ridge.

Although I understand where we are in this moment, this season, I am hoping for something better. I am hoping that we can get back to a time where we keep skiing, on both side of the ridge, until the snow is gone.

At Palisades, we want to ski everything as long as possible, so we’re not calling hard closure dates for most chairlifts. When it burns out, that’s when we’ll stop skiing it.

Palisades Tahoe via Facebook

That’s exactly what we want at Alpine Meadows as well. I would even give up the possibility of skiing past Memorial Day weekend into June or July 4th if it meant a promise of staying open every season while you can still ski to Summit, typically Memorial Day weekend. I certainly hope to never see those words “Alpine Meadows always closes earlier…” ever again.

The Next To Last Day of Skiing Report & Looking Ahead

So yeah, it was a mini-powder-ish day yesterday. I did have some great runs, until I was drenched like a soggy cornflake. I could have prepared better, by switching back to my gear that has at least some level of waterproofing. Some even suggested that it was my lack of preparedness yesterday that led to even greater snowfall yesterday. Still the fun of yesterday made skiing today not quite as fun, and certainly not very long lasting.

As predicted the high sun angles turned yesterday’s new snow into a sticky mess pretty quickly today. While there was a good solid freeze overnight, that new snow was nowhere close to corn yet. On the upper mountain, the groomed slopes were turned into a clumpy mess very quickly. On a trip up Summit around 9:35, you could not even tell whether or not either Sunspot or Alpine Bowl had been groomed. On the lower half of the mountain, where there was a very solid freeze due to the high water content of the snow, you could not even make tracks in the corduroy. It was bulletproof.

There were a few little bits of greatness today and just about all of that focused on the north facing ridge from the ABC barn on out to High Yellow. We found it possible to put together some nice lines on the upper parts of Pygmy Forest and Palisades, with things getting crustier and heavier as you got into the runouts. The hike to Keyhole and Lower Saddle was very popular today as these areas also offered some smooth powder-like turns. We saw a number of people taking on Marenka’s with a lot of hooting and hollering. Also High Traverse did open today, with mixed reviews. The synopsis there is that the top was decent and the bottom not so great.

Other than that just about all of the off piste skiing was trash today. I kept trying things, and I lost count of how many things I traversed out of today. There was a lot of chunder left from yesterday, and after an hour of sun, the snow got manky and sticky. There were a good number of people at the mountain today, and most of them were sticking to the groomers, which made it feel a bit more crowded, especially without Scott, Lakeview (and probably Sherwood as it was very limited there today).

Fortunately it was the 38th Annual Snow Golf event today, and that kept a lot of people occupied, mostly standing in line. I did not come to stand in line on the mountain. So once again, I left that up to other people. They seemed to be having a grand time. I am guessing participants were given a light blue bucket hat with the wrong logo. I saw some on lifties today. I would not wear that in a million years. I found myself thinking today that they probably need to set up a reservation system for snow golf in future season, because like Palisades Tahoe and Alpine Meadows, the demand exceeds the capacity. Honk!

There was a band that played on the deck today. Theoretically the music did not start until 2 pm and I was essentially over skiing and the resultant toe jam from sticky snow by noon. I did not wait for the music today. Hopefully the skiing will last a bit longer with an additional thaw and freeze cycle, and hopefully the music will start earlier tomorrow for the final day of the season.

While I don’t plan to ski much, if at all, in the coming weeks – I did take a look at the upcoming weather patterns. There is not a great spring weather pattern ahead. That series of low pressure systems I mentioned a week ago is still in the forecast. Here’ the 16 day run of height potential anomolies. Blue means lower pressure….cooler temperatures and potential snow showers.

Andy will have the last report of the Alpine Meadows season for you tomorrow. I do plan to do a season recap sometime next week. See you out there tomorrow for the final day at Alpine Meadows.