It was a warm and drizzly morning on this final day of a long ski & skate week. Those clouds and drizzly weather gave some people second thoughts about skiing for the last day of their vacation. A slew of free parking reservations became available overnight as people decided to forego one more day of skiing and riding in favor of getting ahead of traffic. For those of us that went skiing anyways, there were basically no lift lines today, and only the most popular runs felt crowded. It was a nice change and as it turned out, we found some very fun skiing.
The lifts spun early yesterday, so we headed out to Summit hoping that might happen again. It didn’t. In that extra 15 minutes of waiting we were feeling a bit soggy. There was a lot of conversation about how this might be one of those short days. Attitudes did not improve after the first run as flat light and imperfect grooming were not a great mix. There was 100% agreement to staying on the lower mountain, where the light was so much better. As it turned out the groomed slopes actually improved on the second run, with some of those imperfections being smeared smooth by skis and snowboards. I’m not complaining about the grooming. When the weather gets to 50° and the snow gets really mushy, it’s pretty much impossible to get perfection while driving an 18,000 pound snow cat. We get it.
By our third run we figured out that almost everything off piste off of Roundhouse was skiing very well this morning. We put in a half dozen laps around various aspects of Yellow before it started feeling pretty slow and sticky due to warming temperatures and additional drizzle. That led us to explore Scott and Sherwood for fun. The south facing groomers on both are shaping up and that would be the only change to the Corn-O-Meter. They would now rate 🌽🌽🌽 compared to the 🌽🌽 rating from Friday.
Sherwood Face was a mixed bag today. Around 10:30 am it was pretty much a coral reef. We saw a number of skiers taking the traverse of shame back to the Robin Hood groomer. Returning around noon, I took a lap on Sherwood Face after noting the groomed terrain had softened. I would call it “stiff slush”, which was okay as long as you skied it aggressively. Otherwise that stiff slush wanted to remove your skis or spin you around. My apologies to the poor fellow that I laughed at when they did a double cartwheel in East Gully. It was a rough day for people expecting powder conditions.
We later found those same stiff slush conditions in D8 and at Tower 19. This is a sign that there is still a lot of water in the snow, with more being added today. Corn development did not progress far with warm overnights. While skiing those last two runs off of Summit we did note that it was snowing very lightly with very wet flakes above 8000 feet.
Tomorrow looks sunny but also windy. At the moment, it doesn’t like it will close major lifts, but will potentially affect some of the double lifts that are closed midweek anyways. Wednesday looks good and then Thursday another week system sneaks in with a potential for a very light amount of snow.
In the longer term, over the upcoming weekend, we get out of a ridge pattern. Right now it looks like we get into a zonal flow for a bit before we see a major trough. This is a bit of a change. It had looked like we could see a storm around the first of March and now that can is being kicked further down the road. We could see some weak systems by Sunday or Monday.
Entering “Late Season”…
We officially enter “late season” tomorrow, being defined as the period after Presidents Day and Ski&Skate Week. That may not be your view, but it is the view of the bean counters that want to maximize profits at ski areas. There are no more three day weekends or major holidays left for most ski areas. Spring sports like Little League, golfing and bike riding start to compete for time in family schedules. This is an uncomfortable thought for people that just want to keep skiing until Memorial Day.
It’s the time where we begin to see some pressure for operations to ramp down a bit, especially after some of the J1 workers leave. But it’s also a time where the mountain starts to feel less busy, even on weekends, with the exception of those periods where we have “powder alerts” issued by marketing and television weather personalities. It’s a time where we start seeing more music on the sun deck (Broken Compass Bluegrass was so fun yesterday). Captain Dan mentioned the possibility of some BBQ at Ice Bar. It’s a part of ski season I embrace, even though it means things are beginning to wind down.
From some quick calculations, we are 60% of the way through the Alpine Meadows ski season. The inklings that I am hearing are April 27th for the final day for Alpine Meadows, which is 62 days away. Making even rougher calculations, given the below average snowfall for February, we will end February somewhere around 62% of average snowfall at the base area. Coverage is significantly better on the upper mountain. I don’t want end of April closures at Alpine Meadows to become the norm, but it’s happening more frequently. Hopefully someone will prove me wrong just to make sure I am wrong….
See you out there tomorrow…
This isn’t Alpine related but since there is no more ████ I figured I’d comment with a conditions report from everybody’s 2nd favorite mountain.
I had low expectations for the day, opting to not snag an Alpine parking reservation and instead going to the much closer ████ . I woke up to a consistent drizzle at 6am. The drizzle experienced at 7,000′ was surprisingly a light dusting of snow at the ████████████████. Despite this, my expectations were lowered still as i pulled into the lot at 8:00 to see it 3/4 full with teams from all over the region. I told myself “at least ski for as long as you drive to get here” and begrudgingly put on my ski boots and hopped in line, waiting in a light mist falling from the low hanging clouds.
Riding up the chair we were met with in your face 50mph winds, taking my abysmally low expectations and burying them 6ft underground. That all changed after 1 turn. Perfect corduroy, the surface of my dreams, edgable, soft, but set up just enough to hold edge for a skier crawling out GS style turns. That cord turned into decent corn on east facing aspects by 9:15(thanks rain). I chose to venture to ████ ████ where I found crispy but edgeable snow my first runs. That turned into a beautiful cream cheesey goodness after a few runs. Every single ████ skied well. All of them. No ice, just good spring skiing.
I will say it, today was hands down the best (non-powder) day of the ski season. So good that I skied non-stop from opening (8:30) all the way until ████ closed for the day.
Moral of the story, the key to happiness is low expectations.
Please remove ████ post. Remember the first rule.
Redactions made 🙂
I liked how seemingly every slope was skiing exactly the same this afternoon. Not the best but pretty fun by my standards and it just served to make life uncomplicated.
Sure hope they don’t close Lakeview on march 2nd or anything.
Also found little pockets of good snow hunting around today. Hoping for some wind buff tomorrow too.