Truth Be Told…

Truth be told, I was not at all done skiing when Alpine Meadows closed for the season on April 28th. I thought I was okay with not skiing, but as the month went on, I rapidly fell right back in love with skiing. It is not a secret that I do love spring corn, so once that early May “biggest storm of the season” snow had a chance to springify again, I was drawn back into the ski routine. I ended up skiing 12 more days on the Palisades Tahoe side, which is likely a lifetime record for me in one season.

So I have been going skiing at Palisades, but not doing any reporting here at UnofficialAlpine.com. My reasoning is pretty simple. The first thing is that I really don’t know all that much about the mountain. Skiing the mountain formerly known as S*** Valley as a kid, I pretty much always stuck to the Mainline and Newport lifts. Neither of those lifts even exist any more. Later in life, most of my experience on the other side consisted of late season skiing limited to just the groomed slopes of Gold Coast and Shirley. So during the last month, I have had a great opportunity to explore more of the mountain. Still I know just slightly more than your average tourist about the mountain.

Also, I have enjoyed taking a break from weather forecasting and reporting. During the winter season, I usually spend at least an hour a day studying weather models and trends and reading other people’s thoughts. Over the last month I have been able to just take a cursory look and say “Oh, it’s going to be windy!”

I will say, the best survival strategy for skiing at Palisades Tahoe in the spring is to not be a lemming. Avoid Siberia Bowl, the Gold Coast run, Tomlinson’s off of Shirley and Main Backside off of Granite and you will be fine. I wouldn’t share exactly which runs I ended up calling my favorites because they would also then become overcrowded. I will say, and I have said it before, I really like Granite Chief. Here’s an interesting fact about my personal season totals:

• Granite Chief – 27 rides for the season
• Yellow: 16 rides for the season
• Alpine Bowl Chair: 11 rides for the season
• Kangaroo: 10 rides for the season

It’s not that I like Granite Chief that much better. It’s more of a statement about how infrequently the other three chairs ran this season. We all want a mountain where every chair is open every day, especially when the mountain gets very busy. Fingers crossed that the next COO of Palisades Alpine Meadows agrees with that idea.

What Palisades Tahoe Got Right This Month

In previous seasons, late season operations were typically limited to just Gold Coast and Shirley with a smattering of Big Blue. All of those lifts offer limited excitement. The runs are short and not necessarily interesting. But this year, the announced policy was to run lifts until they couldn’t be run anymore. From the start of May, that included KT-22, Headwall, Siberia, Gold Coast, Big Blue, Mountain Meadow, Shirley and Granite Chief and more. It offered a much more extensive variety of terrain for late season skiers and riders.

There were a few kinks. Some would argue that Solitude should have also stayed open. There was also some grumbling about KT-22 and Headwall closing while there was still continuous coverage back to the lift. But there are challenges to keeping the top of those lifts covered due to the sunny exposure. More importantly, the clientele has changed radically at Palisades Tahoe and Alpine Meadows since becoming a premier Ikon Pass destination. Not all of those first time visitors show good judgment when it comes to terrain that many of us frequent skiers and riders think is easy peasy. We have seen some very conservative terrain management on both sides of the ridge because of that.

Those who wanted it still got to it. Every day that I skied to the bottom on Mountain Run, it made me smile to see that people were still making the long traverse and hike to get Chute 75.

It also feels like things were just a little bit less crowded than previous years. Just look back to our posts from the Alpine Meadows Summer Session last season to remind yourself how busy it was. There’s two things at work here. I feel like most people are savvy to the fact that this was just an average season when it came to snowfall. With the exception of that “biggest storm of the season” on May 4th, many had totally moved on from skiing and riding. Also, it seemed like the marketing team kicked it down a notch this spring. There were fewer social media posts showing the young ‘uns and “their crew” cavorting on the mountain in bikinis and costumes. While there were some apres ski concerts early in the month, and “Made In Tahoe” this weekend, there were some down times. The weekend of the 18th and 19th on the mountain looked just like any other mid-week day, meaning very bearable.

That meant I basically never stood in a line at any lift more than a few minutes, including this Memorial Day weekend. That is a huge improvement over past seasons. Then again I skipped the “best powder day of the year” on May 5th…because I hate lift lines.

Also they kept Mountain Run open right until the end of the day today. Sure it was slow in places and very spicy in other places. Also, by today, the snow ended about 200 yards from the base of the Funitel, requiring a muddy and dusty walk to finish your day. Over the course of the last week, I had the opportunity to be the only skier or rider on Mountain run for the entire way down to the dirt ending. This happened on three different days. It’s something I have never experienced before. It’s a far more serene experience that it is during the normal season, when you have to be worried about being taken out by some Barney skiing far faster than he should. A couple of my friends kept using the tag this week #deathbeforedownload. I love it.

It Wasn’t All Peachy

The Village At Palisades Tahoe is still a thing. Without having a seasonal locker on this side of the ridge, it meant booting up in the parking lot and stomping either through the village or around the village to get to the Funitel. Yes, I know, during the regular season you can park steps from Far East and then get to the other lifts without setting foot in the faux village. I experimented more than ever with parking in different zones and deciding which walk was the least troublesome. Never once was I tempted to spend money in the village. That said, my favorite parking allowed for a stop at Wildflour for a pizza bagel, which is technically not in the village.

Having to ride the Funitel before you can think about skiing is not ideal. Yeah, I know, KT to Headwall allows you to skip that, but not late in the game. Lift Blog says the Gold Coast Funitel ride time is 7.6 minutes. Not this season, as it seemed to be on “ECO” mode. I don’t know how long the ride was, but it seemed like hours some days. The worst days were the ones where you end up crammed next to that guy that doesn’t believe in using deodorant, or the one that still believes that using a ton of AXE body spray will make them a better skier. Defensively, I just started showing up at the Funitel at 8:15 or so after most of the crowds had subsided. #deathbeforedownload

Then there were the world class potholes in the parking lot. I swear I saw a half dozen Teslas lose their front bumper over the last month. The potholes are so big, they throw filled sandbags into the biggest ones so they wont swallow a whole car. Weirdly, after a whole season of winning the pothole World Series, some of them finally got filled at the end of last week. Not all of them, just some of them…the smaller ones. What are they thinking? Why fix the parking lot if we’re just going to build water park there in the future? It’s an odd thing for people to experience this as they drive in and get their first impression of this “world class resort.”

Summing It Up

I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to continue my ski season at Palisades Tahoe. I would have rather done the same at Alpine Meadows. A few of my ski friends showed up each day at Palisades but not all of them, and I miss that. The skiing at Palisades Tahoe is always better than Alpine Meadows…at least that’s what we will always claim. This May, it was true.

I ended this season with 173 days on the odometer, which is not bad for an average season. Looking ahead, it’s only about 160 days until we start seeing lift served skiing again someplace in California or Nevada. I’ll be ready for it.