Step By Step, Bit By Bit

It was another very good day of skiing and riding at Alpine Meadows. As more lifts open at Alpine Meadows and the place next door, the lift lines are getting shorter. Taking today as an example, the amount of minutes I actually skied was 50% more than the number of minutes spent in line at lifts. With all attention on the Scott lift this morning, the line at Summit was basically non existent. This makes for happy skiers and riders, almost able to just ski right onto the lift.

The number of skiers and riders seems to steadily be increasing as the week goes on. As is typical for holiday periods, 90% of those people are using about 10% of the available terrain. If you spent your day on Weasel, Dancefloor, Charity or Scott Ridge today – you would have said “This place is crazy busy!” But just yards away there are plenty of areas that aren’t groomed where you could have all of the space you wanted. I would name Tower 19 and Ladies Slalom as two areas I really enjoyed today, without feeling like I needed a rear view camera on my helmet.

At Scott, the corral was full pretty much by 9:15am, with people anxious to take on whatever terrain they could find. I think the wait was near an hour before loading began and the whoops and hollers were heard from Scott Chute. I heard great reports from those first couple of laps, but it did not take long for soft powder to turn into good sized moguls surrounded by some fear inspiring rock outcrops. The less adventurous took Scott Ridge, which was typically a bit rough, as that first grooming often can be. Bobby’s was not groomed and was reported as a bit sun baked due to its southern exposure. I did catch Bobby’s later in the day when it had been converted to a “Chunky Monkey” state. It was character building.

Gentian Gully and The Promised Land did not open today and that is not a surprise. While The Promised Land looked decent, the return from Gentian Gully and Lower 40 is basically in a creek bed and running water is an issue in that area. We need to wait for more storms with cold temperatures.

Since my last report, Hotter Wheels was opened to the top. Besides giving access to Expert Shortcut and Hidden Knolls, you can also get a far better glimpse of conditions at Sherwood and Lakeview. Sizing up the situation with an untrained but experienced eye, it does look like Sherwood probably could be prepped, except the incoming storm will likely prevent such notions. On the other hand, Lakeview is decidedly not ready. The Lakeview terrain is frequently the victim of wind scouring along the ridgeline and the view from Shuttle Cornice today showed that was the case with the last storm.

Kangaroo was half heartedly added to the schedule today. Only the main Kangaroo Run side was groomed. Nicks was left as a chundery mess. A race course was roped off on most of the Kangaroo Run and was very lightly used. It did not attract any other teams or the general public. There’s so much more potential there.

UPDATE: Yellow is on the schedule tomorrow

Also noted today at the RFID gates…either some of the gantries were lowered, moving the sensors lower, or more snow was brought in, raising skiers higher. Either way, TLC is working great. Summit is working better. Roundhouse is still problematic.

It was parking reservations day Tuesday again, with reservations made available for January 3rd and 4th. After having a near perfect record of performance all last season, the system choked at noon today. I’m not sure whether it completely crashed and rebooted or if it was just really bogged down. It took quite some time to make reservations. Hopefully the 7pm session goes more smoothly. That said, the need for reservations this weekend may become a moot issue.

It’s A Less Than Ideal Forecast

It’s not ideal but it is the forecast that we will be living with over the next 5 days. What’s less than ideal mean? We expect to see quite of bit of rain from later tomorrow afternoon until Friday evening. Snow levels have been trending higher with the first system, now showing up as 8k to 10k feet on Thursday and Friday. It will make for some very soggy ski conditions for New Years Day. We were also rained out on Christmas Day.

The second system moves in Friday night into Sunday or Monday. The strength of this system has not been consistent in the models. Earlier this morning, the models were weaker, causing a Winter Storm Watch that called for 1-2 feet of snow. The last few model runs are now pumping things up again. The last few runs of the GFS ensemble show the possibility of 3-4 feet of snow over the weekend, combined with Sierra ridge gusts over 100mph. Yikes. Expect limited lift operations.

This will be a boon for the mountain in bolstering the current base, as well as allowing for more fully opening the mountain. For those of us around to ski or ride next week, yay! For those people that need to get home over Donner Summit this weekend, it is likely to be problematic. It seems like 80 closes just about every time it snows these days. Here’s the GIF of the last dozen model runs for total snowfall:

There’s not supposed to be all that much rain tomorrow, but it is expected to move in sooner than previously thought. I hope to get in some good laps before it gets too soggy. Making mental notes now to bring something a bit more waterproof for tomorrow. See you out there.