Ice Ice Baby

Ice Ice Baby was first released by Vanilla Ice in 1990. I can remember how much I disliked that song at the time. Whenever it would come on during my long winter commute in my Suzuki Samurai, I would be furiously stabbing at the simple FM radio to find another station, any station. But here it is 35 years later and I hear that opening riff and find myself singing that opening line several times a day while skiing at Alpine Meadows in its current condition, 15 days from the last snowfall. I keep looking for that magic button that will change our station back to a more pleasant mix of snowstorms and some sunny days thrown in for Vitamin D absorption. (Calm down chem trails guy!)

What I would rather be hearing in my head is “Let It Snow”, but as we have entered the latter half of January, it’s tougher to find that on the radio station to plant the ear worm . Yes, there is some snow in the forecast and I will get to that later.

It Could Be Worse

It could be worse, as in the parking lots could be full. They were not yesterday or today. People seem to draw the line at I don’t want to ski badly enough to park at Deer Park or Hidden Valley. Not even the upper lots totally filled. When I left around 1 today, Chalet Road was empty as was about four rows at the end of Lot 4. That means that in general, the lift lines were tolerable for the most part. All lifts have been in service this weeknd at Alpine Meadows. All terrain is not in service and that means that people are squished into a smaller area.

High Traverse and the Upper Bowls have not been open at all and a number of other steep runs are currently marked with a skull and crossbones or closed entirely. A good percentage of the weekend clientele wants nothing to do off piste terrain completely, sticking only to the groomed terrain they can see from the chairlift exit. I have had several close calls over the last two days, as well as pretty much everyone I know.

Fortunately the winds abated quite a bit today and that brought some off piste terrain back into play. We enjoyed laps on Sherwood Face and Robin Hood that offered smooth bumps where the snow has corned up. I don’t know that it softened as much as it was shaved down by traffic this morning. Unfortunately this caught the notice of many and it wasn’t long before Sherwood became the longest of the lines at Alpine Meadows today and we bailed as there is always Tuesday. Other terrain took longer to soften. Andy did South Face once and did not seem excited to return. I sampled Standard around noon and it was awful. Because the traffic on Summer Road was terrifying, we bailed from Scott. There is always Tuesday.

The Need For Speed

I like to go fast. You may have seen me cranking one big arc down the far right side of Rock Garden when it’s empty or letting the big dogs eat when I am the first person down Weasel Run. But a holiday weekend with icy conditions is not the time to be skiing fast. I know there are people out there that equate fast skiing with good skiing. That is just not always true. Some of the fastest skiers on the mountain are those that really don’t know how to ski. Nearly every one of the close calls or collisions you see on the mountain involves a skier or snowboarder going too fast in a congested area: Sandy’s Corner, the Chalet speed zone or the runout to the Summit lift. Nobody is impressed when you pull a jackass stunt going fast amongst the slow. I would love to see Ski Patrol be just a bit more heavy handed in enforcement.

Two years ago, the speed records were removed from the Palisade Tahoe app, and I applauded that act. Recently Jackson Hole Mountain Resort decided to remove the vertical feet “leaderboard” in their app, noting that it created a safety issue with people trying to gain too much vertical too fast. Currently I am number one on the leaderboard for number of days skied. I have not missed one yet. But I am not there for vertical feet. While I do have my own goals for vertical feet, I don’t want to compete with people that are just hot lapping KT22 or Summit vying for more and more vertical feet accumulation. I only want to know that I am doing about the same or more than previous seasons. I feel like it’s time for Palisades Tahoe to remove vertical feet from their leaderboard too, and hoping they still allow us to keep it as a personal statistic.

The Hype Machine Is Warming Up

Before talking about the snow that the usual suspects are starting to hype up, let’s talk about tomorrow. It’s going to get ugly. Today we saw highs near 40° with very little wind. That allowed for more comfortable ski conditions and more softening of the snow. Tomorrow will be quite the opposite, with a dry cold front moving in overnight. Here’s the point forecast for Alpine Meadows at md-mountain tomorrow:

M.L.King Day Sunny, with a high near 25. Wind chill values as low as zero. Blustery, with an east wind 25 to 28 mph, with gusts as high as 50 mph.

That is not going to be pleasant for most people. If those east winds pan out, you can count on a Summit wind hold for some portion of the day. I also would not expect anything off piste to soften at all. I probably will not be meeting my personal goal for vertical feet tomorrow.

The rest of the week looks pretty pleasant and spring-like for those of us that have left our 40 hour work weeks behind. We have endured a lot of east winds lately. I am looking forward to weather that allows more off piste skiing once again.

That “Return To Snow!!!!!!!!” you may have read about begins sometime on Friday, meaning it is now 5 days out in the forecast, out of Fantasyland and into the Realm of Possibility. We have that going for us. You are going to be disappointed by what the models runs are showing. Here’s one of the latest runs of the GEFS for total snowfall through Sunday:

The problem is that this storm is currently forecast as an inside slider, which means it takes a dry approach over land from the north and drops into Nevada. It’s a cold but dry approach. That ridge in the Pacific is tough to beat.

There are two things to note. If you looked at a longer version of that clip you would see that low hangs over So Cal for another few days. For us that would mean more east winds the following week. I looked at this same model series yesterday and the track was more in Nevada, so it’s moved a bit more west. But this is not the storm we are looking for yet. Don’t rush out an make your AirBnB reservation for next weekend because Cletus told you it would snow again.

Looking past that storm, there are no model runs, out of the last 12, that have more than 8-10 inches of snow over the next 16 days. The other models are really not all that more hopeful. It is the reality we are in for the current season and no amount of complaining will change that. I did just buy some new skis that are better for powder, so I probably personally jinxed everything.

I will be out there tomorrow, but probably not for all that long.