Deep Snow, Deep Trouble: Surviving the Chaos of a Powder Day

Frequent readers of Unofficial Alpine already know that I have a love/hate relationship with powder days. Sometimes they are really good, sometimes they are far worse than expected, and some are somewhat average, like today. They bring the crowds out of the woodwork, especially as we are entering prime spring break season and our local schools called a snow day. A lot of snow fell in the last 24 hours and that led to some very touchy conditions for patrollers to manage. Often I think I just prefer the serenity and consistency of a sunny spring corn day.

This storm did deliver as forecast, and maybe even beyond forecast. The automated sensor at the base of Roundhouse gained 26 inches of snow overnight, with another 6 falling during the day today. The automated sensor at Belmont over at Palisades picked up 32 inches of snow overnight at 8000′ or slightly higher than the top of Roundhouse. The WSW called for 2-3 feet of snow, so we are there and there’s more to come tonight. Also, shoutout to BA, who also called for the delay in lowering snow levels. They never went down until about 6pm yesterday.

The result of that was more snow than your average visitor can handle. The snow was so deep in the morning hours that there was very little terrain off of Roundhouse that was steep enough for the depth of the snow. There was a lot of 4mph straight lining going on, as well as slopes littered with large sitzmarks on the snow where people had augered themselves in, requiring extrication. The grooming team also had trouble dealing with that much new snow. Rock Garden and Red Trail both had large berms where a groomer had started the grooming process but never finished, as the groomer was stuck above Sandy’s Corner, deep in the snow.

Still we managed to find some fun turns. I would dare to say that the snow actually skied a bit better for most people once it was cut up a bit. The secret was to find those areas that were lightly tracked, yet not tracked enough to start forming moguls. That was especially important as Mr. Miyagi kept turning the lights on and off. I know it was him as I could hear him saying “Lights on, lights off” as the sun darted between clouds.

Breaking Down The Chaos

• In my book, the best powder days happen when we have medium sized storms that allow Mountain Ops and Ski Patrol to essentially open everything at once. Today was not one of those days. It was a sequential opening day. Meadow was the first lift open, and only a few of us nut jobs warmed up there. When Roundhouse opened, almost everybody was there and stayed there. Even those that lined up at Summit came back to Roundhouse after being advised of long delays for Summit. Roundhouse was pretty much skied out in a lap or two. The crowds moved on to the Summit opening, and it was done in run or two. And that cycle naturally would have continued at Scott and Sherwood. See below.

• Nothing opened at Palisades Tahoe USA International until late in the day. That left Alpine Meadows to do the job of two mountains, so it was ungodly crowded for a Thursday in March. See below.

• The communications via official channels were absolute trash this morning. I started looking at the PalisadesTahoe app this morning around 4am. At that time, it showed very limited operations at Alpine Meadows: TLC and Sherwood. But over the hill, it showed pretty much everything on schedule for 9am. There was zero mention of delayed openings or possible weather impacts. That set a whole lot of people in motion toward Palisades this morning. There weren’t any real updates until about 8:40, when Roundhouse was scheduled, Sherwood was removed from the schedule and everything next door suddenly appeared as closed. Yet all of those people were already on the way. A bit later those statuses were changed to “Patrol Hold”. See below.

• The unofficial communications from this blog noted that the forecast amount of snow was likely going to cause all sorts of problems and we posted that information 48 hours ago. It seems like more people need to read Unofficial Alpine. Or those official channels need to start communicating more realistically about conditions rather than communicating for wallet capture. At one time they were better.

• (Below)There was one two three four five six? inbounds slides today that I know of between Alpine Meadows and Palisades Tahoe:

• KT22 around 8am: An experienced ski patroller traveling to their control route was caught in an avalanche this morning. The patroller reportedly had a possible broken femur but will recover. This is the incident that put the entire Palisades side on patrol hold.
• Red Dog Face: Reportedly slid almost to the Red Dog line while people were in line, with the powder cloud reaching the line. This is probably the incident that resulted in guests being shooed out of the Roundhouse and Summit lines back to the deck until control work was done.
• KT-22: A second inbounds avalanche happened around 1:30 near The Fingers with a partial burial. This required another patrol hold on KT-22. No injuries were reported.
• Arts Knob: Reported slid during control work partially burying the zone around the TLC mid-station. That required a crew of cats to be sent up to clean up the mess and long delays in opening TLC.
• East Gully at Sherwood: An inbounds slide occurred about 15 minutes after Sherwood opened just after noon. Friends said this was actually in Chute Zero. A couple of friends inquired about my safety, that being one of my favorite spots. I’m only there on corn days. There is an unofficial report on Reddit that there was a burial on the Sherwood slide and a recovery. There was a full search done via beacon, RECCO and two dogs. I was also told that people witnessed skiers going past the big red stop sign indicating that South Face was closed. People can be stupid.
• An Alpine Meadows patroller also broke a leg today along the Lower Beaver sign line. It’s unclear whether this was an avalanche related incident or something else.

Overall that is a very difficult day for ski patrol on both side of the mountain. We need to constantly give reminders that just because patrol is doing their best to control avalanches, it never can be perfect. The signs were there today that today was potentially problematic. We had large amounts of snow all at once with variable temperatures and some wind loading. Driving up Alpine Meadows road you could see several slide paths. They were also visible from the lift queue at Roundhouse and Summit.

Additionally, when Mountain Ops is putting out this on Xitter, it’s time to rethink how rad you want to get that day:

I don’t get that part about “try to go feet first”. Really? Who are they kidding?

More Snow Is On The Way

We are not done with this round of storms yet. Storm one blends into Storm 1.5 as we head into the night hours. Here’s the point forecast for the top of Roundhouse.

The numbers are far more manageable for mountain ops, ski patrol and 98% of the skiing and riding public. That said, the winds could be a problem for some lifts tomorrow. Theoretically things will be less chaotic without a 1000 people per hour arriving on those shiny boxes. Please let the upper mountain open next door for the coming three days!

Storm number two moves in for Sunday into Monday. Right now this looks like it won’t be a huge deal, offering 12-18 inches of additional snow. There has not been a Winter Weather Watch or Winter Storm Warning released for this one yet and that is a curious thing.

Besides causing chaos and some nice winter turns, there’s the larger question about whether or not this new snow will give the powers that be the idea to consider keeping Alpine Meadows open for a longer season….

Thanks to Mountain Ops and Patrol for all of their work this week. Hopefully the communications from the mountain will improve to match their previously decent level. See you out there tomorrow….