UPDATED: Day 1 Of Skiing In The Tahoe Region

Mount Rose opened for the season today, again claiming the honors of being the first in Tahoe to open. They even beat Mammoth by a week. Alpine Meadows is not quite there yet, but we will get there at some point. Don’t stop reading todays’s report because you don’t care about Mount Rose. This report will contain three different parts and you can use the links below to skip around.

• Reporting on Opening Day at Mount Rose and Comparing Notes With Our Home Mountain
• An Update On The Potential For Incoming Natural Snow
• Update On Casey & Tina Jones: Help Is Needed

Thankful To Be Skiing Again

Mount Rose is a mountain that is still run by people that love to ski and ride. They exist to provide the best experience they can for what is mostly local pass holders from the Reno and Tahoe area. As much as I love my home mountain at Alpine Meadows, I have still had a backup pass at Mount Rose for 16 of the last 21 seasons. When I caught wind that Mount Rose had a goal of opening on November 8th this season, I quickly stashed away some cash* for their “Off Peak” pass. That will keep me covered until the date that Alpine Meadows opens, possibly November 27th.

*Actually I just paid for it out of my informal “health savings account”, money I have set aside to cover a potential large deductible event. Now I just need to stay out of the ER and hospital…

Mount Rose did open today with both the Lakeview chairlift and the magic carpets open. Sure it was really just one run open, but that run serves up 1050 vertical feet covering a range of intermediate terrain over the mile long run. Rose reported coverage at 20-40 inches and I think that was a reasonable estimate. Relative to last season, KC Bowl and Pondersosa were both about 50% wider for opening day. Over 12 runs this morning, I had 50 minutes of ski time and about an hour each of chairlift time and waiting in line time. I hate lift lines, but I am willing to tolerate the short waits today given it’s the only game in town. I saw a variety of people from Alpine Meadows there today, as well as a who’s who assortment of the internet semi-famous: Phil and Tricia from SkiTalk.com, Snowboard Jesus from Northstar and my buddy Mark The Ski Bum.

There were few takers for the magic carpet lift this morning, but that will be a very important bonus when more families arrive over the weekend. That said, the slopes were busy today, but not terrifying. The snow surface was actually better than last year early season, not really getting scraped down until the noon hour. You know I will be back there tomorrow, and each day after that until Alpine Meadows opens.

Many were throwing shade at some other mountains this morning. The morning DJ spun tunes and reminded people that “the parking lots at Mount Rose are higher than the summit of KT-22.” It was also duly noted that there was a festive atmosphere with the DJ and music and about the first 150 people in line getting a free opening day tank top. Last season at Alpine Meadows, I believe free beanies were given to the first two chairs when Hotter Wheels opened, or about 8 people. I could also grumble here and point out that I still have not received my free “100 Days” tee shirt from Palisades Tahoe for last season. A number of park rats were out enjoying the four features set up along Ponderosa, lamenting that Boreal finally started making snow this week.

It’s a different feeling at Mount Rose, and one that I like. Here’s the splash page as it appeared at Mount Rose shortly after opening this morning:

In contrast, here’s the current splash page at the Palisades Tahoe website:

Yup, one of these is different than the other. One place is all about the on the mountain experience and the other…not so much. It doesn’t even mention opening day on the Palisades splash page. You have to know to look for it on the events calendar. It took 7 clicks to get to this page:

There’s still few details about what will actually be open, or even what they hope to open. Very little has been said about where snowmaking has been happening, nor what sort of progress they have made. Frankly things look like they are going pretty well on the Alpine Meadows side. From what you can see from the base webcam, it is tough to tell. A friend sent the photo below from the Tiegel Terrain park area this week and coverage is looking decent. I’ll say it again, we really need another webcam at The Chalet, showing conditions on Weasel, Scott and Yellow.

Update: A reader pointed that a Chalet Cam is now available on the Palisades website. It is not on the app yet. Yes that is an awesome addition. Another reader with some intel suggested that Weasel could be ready for race training and staff training by next weekend. Snowmaking moves to Subway soon and hopefully to Rock Garden and Upper Weasel One to allow some Roundhouse by opening day. Still thinking the 27th.

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Over at Palisades, they have started making snow in the Red Dog zone. I have seen that on the web cams. I have not seen activity on the upper mountain yet. There’s just not much information about what might happen on the 27th of November. I will miss the former official blogger of Palisades Tahoe, Elizabeth Worgan. She did a very good job of making this blog a little bit more pointless. Sadly, she has moved on to a new employer, and we will continue blogging here.

Let’s be clear here, I am not throwing any shade at the operations staff at either mountain. Being a part of a huge corporation, where decisions are made months ahead of time and three states away, and dollars matter more than the on the mountain experience – well it’s a completely different world for Alpine Meadows and Palisades Tahoe. I know plenty of people on the mountain ops team and management at Alpine Meadows, and many of them would be happy to open as soon as possible. Thank you for that. I can’t wait to return there.

Update: The additional updates above show that the mountain ops team is absolutely on their game. The breakdown is in the marketing and communications with people that view the mountains primarily as a place to ski & ride, not an entertainment venue.

There’s A Lot Of Can Kicking In The Weather Department

The weather has been frustrating to say the least. We have seen a number of storms in the models “just 10 days out” over the last month. Some of them looked like “the storm” that could jumpstart things, offering a ski season that doesn’t rely on the efforts of the snow making teams at our mountains. Then with 5 days to go, they suddenly look weaker. Then when they are on the doorstep of the western US, they rise to our north. We get cold winds and a few flakes of snow that melt on the first sunny day. Wash, rinse repeat. The can gets kicked down the road.

I am afraid that is the fate of the next storm, slated to roll in around Monday. At one point, it looked like this was a storm that would bring two feet of snow to the Sierra. It now looks like we may be lucky to see two inches. That has to be nerve wracking for those in the hospitality business around Tahoe, as this is the time period where families are finalizing their plans for the Christmas holiday period. Weak snowfall now often correlates with a slower holiday period. Nobody wants to see another weak season like last year, where we did not get natural snowfall until January. Here’s short term outlook for Alpine Meadows.

Update: These numbers are now back to 4-8 inches mid-mountain for Monday. I hope it happens!

Honestly, I have not done any weather updates for the last week as there has been so little model agreement on what might happen. But things look like they could be changing, with an emphasis on could. We have had some decent agreement for a few model runs and between more than one model that we will see a period of increased troughing in the western US and Pacific. That trough has been centered more over the Rockies, bringing snow there instead of here. Here’s the morning run of the GEFS for 500MB pressure anomaly. Blue means lower pressure and that is good.

Here’s our first PNA Index posting of the season. You can see that the PNA goes negative from about the 10th through the following two weeks. We have not seen a consistent storm pattern like that yet this season.

As of this minute, we have not seen a particular storm that has great potential yet, but right now the Pacific is very active. Maybe we will see some decent storms develop over the next week. There’s a good chance at least.

Reaching Out For Help For Casey & Tina Jones

Casey Jones was a big part of the Alpine Meadows Ski Patrol Team over the last fifty-ish years, serving from the mid-70’s until just before the pandemic. I am not going to lie here. I used to be afraid of Casey Jones, as he was a patrol supervisor, and he busted a few younger friends of mine. But then I found out that all of the stories were wrong. In the eyes of a teenager, he was big and scary. But now that I know him, he’s a warm hearted person that has shown a love for the mountain similar to my own. But his wife Tina has been fighting a long battle with cancer, reportedly going over 15 years now. Casey left the Alpine Meadows Ski Patrol, and his summer job fighting forest fires with the US Forest Service, to become a full time caregiver for Tina.

Casey started a Go Fund Me page more than 2 years ago, seeking donations to not only cover the cost of Tina’s care, but also just to cover living expenses. Living in Truckee has never been cheap, but things have gone crazy over that last few years when half of California moved to the Tahoe in the new “work from home” era. While I am not in a position to make a huge donation to Casey and Tina myself, I do have the power of this blog to reach out to others. Even a lot of small donations can add up to something meaningful quickly. Sometime in the next week, I’ll be adding a little PSA ad in the right sidebar in case people lose track of this post.