What Did You Say?
Last night I listened to clear drops of water bouncing off my deck and banging into my window panes. The sound of rain can be a wonderful sound, but not during the winter months when you live at a ski resort. Rain falling, especially during a holiday time period, when everyone is in a festive mood, is disheartening. Off course, it happens more often than we wish to remember, but it does occur at some point during every ski season. Rain, followed by freezing temperatures, creates a really poor surface for skiing. Last night rain fell and then it froze. Streets were very slick causing accidents and slow traffic. Holiday traffic that is normally already slow was even slower because of accidents that most likely were caused by people driving too fast on an icy roadway.
The good news was the sunny clear sky that appeared prior to opening hour.
The bad news, unless you are a ski racer that loves an icy slope, was the consistency of the surface on most trails regardless of there exposure to the sun. The surface, especially the groomed trails, was just a sheet of ice. To be more specific, a sheet of corduroy frozen solid. This situation, not a condition most skiers pray for, creates a dangerous path that skiers and snowboarders tend to ride at excessive speeds, or inch down the slope in fear of falling. The type of condition that leads to a slide for life. A fall followed by an uncontrollable slide down a steep slope that can easily lead to server injury.
Interesting enough, as most people headed for the sloped ice skating rink of groomed corduroy in Alpine Bowl, I decided to test the off-piste. It just looked like it had snowed an inch or so on the south facing slope of Sunspot or Tower 19. The slope looked horrifying as it was filled with various sized balls of snow that one would consider to be ice. Small and large balls of snow with smooth spaces between them. A field of rubble that might spelled the end of my long ski career, or at least required a very long traverse in hopes of returning to the smoother iced over corduroy. Surprise! After one turn I realized the entire slope was soft. Evidently, it did not rain, or it snowed after the rain on the upper slope of Alpine Bowl. In any case, the snow was all soft, even the rubble. I turned with some joy to the bottom of Sunspot and then continued on the frozen groomed trails to the base area. This same condition was evidently available on the sunny slopes in Wolverine Bowl.
On my second or third run down from the top of Summit Chair, I attempted the area next to Alpine Bowl Chair in hopes it would mirror my Sunspot-Tower 19 experience. This more shaded area was not frozen solid, but it was not as soft and the opposite side of the bowl. Below the bottom of Alpine Bowl or Wolverine everything was frozen solid. Frozen skier tracks from the day before that dentists love. You know, the kind of rough terrain that loosens fillings. I did see, what I think were mentally unstable skiers and snowboarders, inching down frozen moguls on steep slopes. Some were even jumping off cliffs on The Face where they landed on hard rough moguls waiting to trip them up and sending them flying down the bumpy slope. Luckily, I did not see anyone mess up too badly.
One of the unfortunate things that happens on a morning like today, when everyone is sliding down frozen slopes, is the noise that is created as skis and snowboards (they seem louder) slide over the ice. You can hear friends yelling to each other, “What did you say? What? What? The noise is really distracting. It certainly minimizes communication between fellow skiers.
As the warm day moved along, snow conditions softened. Ridge Run on Scott softened slowly while Bobby’s took a little longer to become enjoyable. The frozen corduroy slowly lost much of its dangerous topping. We were going to ride the Alpine Bowl Chair around noon, but decided to stay lower down the slope as Alpine Bowl appeared to be stuck with a foggy looking cloud hanging low creating a poor visibility condition.
Hopefully, conditions will change soon. Perhaps some snow will fall allowing people to spread out over the entire mountain instead of over crowding the limited trails that were available in the morning.
I have to wonder how many people that were holding their breaths sliding down frozen trails would have preferred to partake in different activities that may become available at some point in the future within the Village at Palisades Tahoe. If the projected development consisting of hundreds, or thousands, of condominium units is completed over the next 25 years along with shops to browse and a large indoor activity center (filled with all kinds of fun things to do), many of the people on the slope may have chosen to jump on the gondola and engage in safer activities in the other valley. For now we are stuck with little to do other than ski. Happy Holidays to everyone.
Enjoy your day,
Andy