I found myself full of gratitude today. I get to be at Alpine Meadows and call it my church, my office and my home for about 5 months a year. This is a better space than I was in on Tuesday, when my report turned out pretty snarky. I am going to blame this on a bruised coccyx. This was the result of rearranging some 25 pound boulders near Chute Zero, primarily with my tailbone. To say I was “butthurt” is taking it lightly. I was lucky to have not ended my ski season, or much worse. Maybe I just need one of those plush turtles strapped on to my butt…
While there has not been a whole lot of thunderstorm activity right at Alpine Meadows, that passing cutoff low to our south has kept a lot of cloud cover over the area, in particular during the overnight hours. The scientific explanation from my friend Larry would be something about long wave radiation being emitted from the earth being bounced back by the clouds. Your favorite TV weather personality would just say that the clouds act like a blanket, keeping the heat in at night. The end result is that we have not had a great overnight freezes the last two nights.
Conditions over the last two days have been pretty soft. South facing terrain has actually gotten a bit manky again. Today was markedly better than yesterday. Yesterday I left some trenches on Sherwood Face that I was certain went all of the way through to the dirt. Today that terrain was “do-able” but not necessarily great. Often runs would be great at the top but deteriorate the farther you got down the hill.
Still the skiing is fun, in particular on the groomed slopes in the morning. Looking ahead at the upcoming weekend, conditions should improve substantially. Here’s the lows expected over the next three nights: 29°, 31°, 34°. That’s far better than the forties we saw the last two nights. Coverage on the mountain is still pretty good, if it were early May. Here’s a snap of Sherwood Face this morning.
Sherwood Right Face, or lookers left of the chair line, is getting to the point where your choices of exit are rapidly disappearing. Once all of that rock starts absorbing heat, the melt rate accelerates exponentially. At the bottom of the main face, that sink hole has running water in it. It’s going fast, but I hope we get to keep it through next week. I love sneaker lines.
The upper mountain off of Summit is still very well covered. The lower areas of the mountain are looking very late season-ish due to a lot of storms with high snow levels early in the season.
I expect that crowds will start to grow tomorrow being a Friday. It’s pretty much been “ski on” conditions for lifts this week. Taking a more balanced look at the upcoming weekend:
The 39th Annual Alpine Meadows Snow Golf Tourney is happening Saturday. It’s a very popular event so expect crowds, but it fun and people will be having a good time. Sign up on the Sun Deck in the morning. The course ends with a big party with a DJ on the snow beach at the 9th hold near The Chalet. While the crowds of this event are not my cup of tea, it’s a good time for most people. Jive Machine will be playing the Sun Deck from 2 to 5 pm. The event page says this is a funk and rock band. I have not heard them.
There’s three things happening Sunday: the Golden Egg Hunt, the Beacon and Eggs treasure hunt sponsored by the Alpine Meadows Ski Patrol and the standard Easter Bunny stuff with candy eggs for kids. Follow the clues to find the golden egg and win a ’25-’26 Palisades Tahoe/Alpine Meadows season pass. Clues are released on the Palisades social media channels on the hour and sometimes posted at lifts. There are separate golden egg hunts for each mountain. It is much easier to find the golden egg at Palisades Tahoe. Sign up for the Beacon and Eggs hunt from 10-11:30 at the top of Subway. You’ll need your avi gear to locate buried beacons for prizes. That hunt starts at noon.
AARF (the Alpine Avalanche Rescue Foundation) will be out for Snow Golf and Beacon and Eggs. This would be your last chance to purchase AARF shirts for the season. This year’s shirt is one of my favorites. I would also count on a meet n greet with some of the avalanche dogs and their trainers.
Hopefully we continue to get good overnight freezes through the rest of the Alpine Meadows season. There’s not all that many more days to enjoy our home mountain. Just ten more….ski you out there.
UA intern Patty caught these fantastic images in Chute That Seldom slides yesterday. Beauty!
I am glad you’re okay. We don’t want to lose you.
I feel gratitude too today, because it was the first day all season I skied. Yeah, a bit late to the game, but it felt good to bomb down the hill and get my legs burning, even if the snow quality left a bit to be desired. Next season will mark 60 years since the first time I wobbled onto skis as a little kid — at Sugar Bowl, grabbing onto a rope tow to get up the hill — but I don’t get to ski as frequently as most readers here.
So while I’ve been reading your posts on corn snow skiing carefully, I am not sure that I ever really skied corn, having very little experience with late-spring skiing, so I’m not sure what it feels like. I went to the mountain near my home in northern Arizona, with an elevation range from 9,200′ to 11,500′. I’ve been diligently watching the weather and I think there were a few melt-freeze cycles in the past few days, with lots of Arizona sunshine. However, my experience today is that there seems to be a thin line between icy/crusty snow and slush, and somewhere in there corn resides (assuming appropriate weather cycles occurred).
My corn hunt today was not highly successful, but with a storm coming in (Open Snow predicts 9″ of new snow on the mountain tomorrow), there were lots of clouds swirling around and the sun didn’t really get a chance to melt what earlier had frozen. The result is that the snow was mostly … loud and crunchy, and you know what that means. All the skiing was on groomed or slightly mogul’d runs. Going off piste would have been an invitation to “dirt skiing” or otherwise to ruin one’s day. There were brief moments when the snow felt soft and creamy. Was that corn?
I’m too inexperienced with late spring skiing to tell, but these pleasant patches lasted maybe 100-200 yards, then it was onto either icy crust or slush. To be fair, the icy crust skied decently. It was always possible to set an edge, and the surface was predictable when braking from speed. I managed to bang off a handful of runs today using the 2,000′-vertical main lift, with zero lift lines and a 7-minute ride to the top. The snow quality on a run called upper ridge (near the top) usually is very sweet, but even that run today was loud, meaning there must have been melt and freeze cycles that didn’t melt enough today to make corn. Down lower, by midday the slush began, with the familiar feeling of your skis slamming on the brakes. All told, having read pretty much every post this year without having the opportunity to ski this season, it felt good to finally get out and do some skiing, even if not at Alpine Meadows. Definitely I feel gratitude.
I’d offer to kiss your ass, but I’m afraid you’d make me follow through on the promise.
😚