Keeping It Real

We have survived the 19 day winter holiday period, and it ended with a very good weekend. Honestly, I felt like today was the better day overall when it got down to just pure mountain enjoyment. There were fewer people on the mountain, resulting is less of a “hurry up and get it” feeling. Since most of the powder was basically a thing of the past, we stuck together with a pretty large crew of friends just skiing around the mountain to see what we could find. We did this with almost no lift lines and we managed to find something that pleased just about everyone.

Some of the off piste terrain was pretty darn crunchy this morning. While air temperatures were not all that warm yesterday, there was a lot of solar radiation to heat up the snow. As is typical in this type of weather, the north facing off piste snow held up much better. That said, the large numbers of skiers on the mountain created large moguls in many of these zones, some scraped right back to the old ice layer. Near the ABC line, patrol had cordoned off much of Pygmy Forest and the upper parts of Palisades, Keyhole and Lower Saddle, likely due to the idea that lurking ice layer and rock bands represented a bad combination.

Typically on these sorts of days, you hope they just “groom the world”, and that is where much of the fun was in the early hours. Every regularly groomed slope was basically groomed full width and very well, resulting in smooth buttery turns. Gone were those cookies and pumpkins from Friday. We noted that Boomerang (Blue-Green) also was groomed today. Ladies Slalom grew from half width to full width. Over on Scott chair, Bobby got the full manicure job for the first time this season. We tested out all of them.

Initially, Hotter Wheels was only open to the mid-station this morning. Standing at Scott, we noted that it had opened to the top, and that required some investigation. Once standing at the top of Sherwood, the observant eyes in our group spotted full signage being placed from the top of Sherwood chair, odd as the word was it would not open until Monday. (more on that later) It pays to know people and a friendly patroller told us to come back in half an hour.

We hot lapped it back to TLC for another lap and waited for the “rope drop” at the nearly pristine Sherwood Run. Most of the time I want no part of a rope drop, but with less than a dozen of us standing there, I was pretty sure I could stay near the front of the pack. That perfectly creamy corduroy at a high rate of speed can be just as nice as the new snow was yesterday. Some people ventured off toward Sherwood Face to test out the almost untouched hot pow left from yesterday. I saw some people ski that stuff pretty well, and I saw others crash and burn. Eventually patrol finished their bombing and opened South Face and High Traverse. What a treat for those that enjoy hot pow.

Let’s Talk about Yesterday

Yesterday, Andy used the title “Super, Super Day” to describe the bluebird powder day. We don’t always agree on these things. I felt it was more of a pretty good but extremely busy day with a few good powder runs. I took some heat on that in the comment section. I’ll restate now, there will never be a “super” powder day when it is a Saturday during a major holiday period; a bluebird day; with full teams on the mountain and parking reservations completely sold out. According to people that definitely know the number, there were more than 20,000 skiers and riders on the mountains between Palisades and Alpine Meadows. These are conditions that pretty much result in a powder stampede, where most of the accessible powder is gone by 10am. What’s not completely schralped is often cooked by the sun.

In my book, that “super” powder day is a mid-week, non-holiday storm day where there are less than 1000 people on the mountain and things just keep refilling all day. I’m going to reserve the word “super” for those sorts of days. I’ve been running this website since 2008 and one thing that people have come to expect from us is that we try to keep it real when it comes to reporting conditions. We are not shills for the marketing department and get no compensation for the information we provide. It’s also not our responsibility to report in a way that will corroborate your “Best Powder Day Ever!!!!!” Instagram post. If you are looking for that, there is the official conditions blog of Palisades Tahoe.

That said, I let Andy say what Andy wants to say. Rarely do I feel a need to do any editing. He has his way of reporting and is also vastly underpaid for his work, meaning completely volunteer. I appreciate you Andy.

The Importance of Sherwood

We’ve been talking a lot about Sherwood here lately and there’s a reason why. After opening for the season on Thursday, it then had a major failure of the electric drive unit on Friday. People that were on the lift were able to get off under diesel back up power. Those that were not already on the lift at the bottom of Sherwood had to be shuttled out by snowmobile. A complete failure of the drive unit is a big deal. Fortunately a spare was available over at Palisades, one that was set aside for the Shirley Lake lift, which is also a Dopplemayr lift of a similar vintage. While it was not a direct replacement, the lift maintenance team was able to pull the drive unit and install the replacement overnight. Early this morning they began the process of making the programming adjustments required to make it all work, then complete testing. Again it was expected this might take all day, so having it done by 11am is definitely a fete for the lift maintenance team.

Sherwood would have made a heck of a difference yesterday. You might be thinking that it represents only one out of 11 lifts at Alpine Meadows (not including the B2B transport lift). As far as uphill people carrying capacity, Sherwood only handles about 10% of it. But it’s all about the terrain. Sherwood serves an immense amount of terrain. In the “named runs” category, that’s about 125 acres of terrain. But when you then include all of the terrain, from Ray’s Rut all of the way over to the farthest edge of South Face, it’s way more. Sherwood is also a key ingredient for opening High Traverse, from CB Chute all of the way out to CK Bench and points beyond. It’s a massive amount of terrain that likely would have opened yesterday. My best guess is that it is somewhere around 1/4 to 1/3 of Alpine Meadows terrain.

All of that terrain not only spreads people out, it also keeps them hiking and traversing. That means they are not making high speed laps on Summit and other lifts devouring terrain like locusts. I know, the “north bowls” were open yesterday, but that is not the same. The hikes are more difficult, the entrances more intimidating and the exits can be equally intimidating. Remember that KSL era marketing trash that called High Traverse “intermediate terrain”? Well relative to the north bowls there is some truth to that! I would estimate that probably only about 1% of all skiers and riders on the mountain made those tracks out in the north bowls yesterday. Far more people would have flocked to High Traverse if open.

Welcome back Sherwood. I am a huge fan.

Warm, Then Cold & Windy Before Warmer

There’s not much excitement in the forecast over the next 10 days, unless you enjoy a cold east wind event. Tomorrow should be a sunny and warm day for skiing and riding. There are a few schools and colleges that have this week off so it will not be completely empty. But it will be nice to leave the house later and have a little less pressure on the mountain.

By Monday night, a low pressure system will retrograde into southern California. That will bring so strong winds and fire danger to the southern part of the state. We will be on the northern edge of the system, where the counterclockwise rotation will bring us east winds for Tuesday. Right now they look potentially strong enough to possibly cause a Summit wind hold. It will also be quite a bit more chilly with a 20% chance of some ineffectual snow showers. Maybe we could see some wind buff.

After that we get a relatively quiet period through about day 10. After that, the models want to flip the east-west dipole again. That would put a large trough over the west by around mid-month. That’s pretty far into Fantasyland territory, but it’s worth keeping and eye on the potential for a return to winter conditions.

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Fun fact: Your Ikon pass will get you a 30% discount on food and beverages in the Meadows cafe before 11:30am. It’s an excellent idea to help encourage people to miss the busiest times.