Imperfect: The Weather & The Ikon App

It was an imperfect morning for weather in Tahoe, with yet another day of rain right to the crest of the Sierra. We’ve seen far too much of that this season. Because of that, my record for ski days is also imperfect. I did not go out today due to the rain, and a hard jab to the ribs yesterday with a ski pole. But these are not the things I planned to write about today. It’s a good time to talk about the imperfections in the Ikon Pass mobile app.

I’ve managed to avoid using Ikon app ever since it was released in 2019. Instead I’ve been using the Palisades Tahoe mobile app for tracking lift operations, access to web cams, and tracking my ski days. While the Palisades Tahoe app wasn’t always perfect, it is far better than the Ikon Pass that has replaced it. I’ve indicated in previous reports that I planned to use the independent Slopes app this season for tracking my skiing. Since the season at Alpine Meadows began last week, I’ve been forced to use the Ikon Pass app to track lift statuses, in particular for openings and wait times. Honestly, it’s somewhat of a nightmare.

There’s Two Different Things Going On

When it comes to the Ikon Pass mobile app, there’s two different things going on, but they are related.

• Alterra Mountain Company, the owners of Palisades Tahoe/Alpine Meadows, have been desperate to make it look like one big ski area, Slowly but surely the Alpine Meadows identity has been erased. Only the lodge now carries the “Alpine” name. While the old Palisades Tahoe mobile app was neatly divided into sections for the Palisades and Alpine base areas, the Ikon Pass app makes almost no differentiation between the two bases. It’s very confusing for people that don’t know what’s up.
• The user interface is terrible on the Ikon Pass app. Things that should take one click or a simple scroll can take five clicks, or multiple scrolls, and thats assuming you have a general sense of locations. On top of that, the app is either memory intensive or bandwidth intensive as it is as slow as molasses in below zero weather.

Do You Want To Know What Lifts Are Open?

As noted before, the Palisades Tahoe app designated lift locations by which ski area they are a part of, either Alpine or Palisades. The Ikon Pass app avoids using the “Alpine” designation by instead breaking up lifts by their respective peaks. That in itself is a bit comical as only local diehards would be familiar with all of the “peaks”. Here’s the designations:

• Snow King Peak: Ahsoka, Far East, Red Dog, Resort Chair, First Venture
• KT Peak: KT-22, B2B, Olympic Lady, Exhibition
• Palisades Peak: Headwall, Siberia, Wa She Shu
• Emigrant Peak: Gold Coast, Emigrant, Funitel, Big Blue
• High Camp: Tram, Baileys, Broken Arrow, High Camp Carpet, Silverado, Mountain Meadow
• Terrain Parks: Belmont
• Granite Chief: Granite Chief, Shirley, Solitude
• Summit Peak: Summit, Alpine Bowl, B2B, Big Carpet, Kangaroo, Roundhouse, Yellow
• Scott/Lakeview: Scott, Lakeview, Subway, Meadow, TLC
• Sherwood Bowl: Sherwood

There has been all sorts of discussion about these designations on various online ski forums. Reportedly, Palisades mountain ops has always used these peak designations. Do first time visitors have any clue? Not likely. Also there is no “Summit Peak”, it’s Ward Peak. There is no “Lakeview Peak”. Scott Peak is actually located near the top of the Lakeview lift. Clear as mud, yes? Then again, many of these lifts are nowhere near their designated peak. Then there’s poor Belmont and Sherwood lifts, without a peak to call home. It’s just silly to organize things this way.

It’s probably worth mentioning that this same organizational strategy is now employed on the Palisades Tahoe website.

When it comes to figuring out what’s open and what’s closed, and what the wait times are on various lifts, it may require clicking window shade tabs to see lifts or hunting around several tabs if you are a new visitor. This could be so much easier to make sensible divisions like: Alpine, Palisades Lower Mountain and Palisades Upper Mountain.

Don’t even get me started on trying to drill down to the trail status. Trails are no longer listed by the lift used to access the trail. They are also divided by peaks, making some of those trail listings quite long. It can take 5 or 6 swipes just to get through all of the trails on one peak. It’s idiotic.

But You Can Skip That And Use The Live Map Feature

Several users have pointed out online that you can find all of the information you want by just using the “Live Map” feature, which shows lifts and their status, including the wait time. There was a time where that sort of solution might have worked. But last season, some knucklehead decided that it would be better if we combined Palisades Tahoe and Alpine Meadows into one giant map. This again is to create the illusion of one giant ski area. That alone makes that map almost useless, in particular the miniaturized Alpine Meadows section.

Making matters worse, when you select the map feature, it defaults to the village map instead of the trail map. You have to click to go to the trail map and then know which direction to scroll to find Granite Chief or Scott, or the inset that shows Sherwood. This again can take a half dozen swipes. If the screen is wet on your device, or your gloves are not “touch friendly”, all bets are off.

Then there’s that issue of speed, where things just hangup as you’re trying to move around on the map. Whether that’s an issue with memory, bandwidth or poor design does not matter. It all means that the app is not nearly as responsive as it should be, and that means it’s not useful to me. Fortunately, having spent thousands of days at Alpine Meadows, I rarely have the need to look at a map.

Here’s One Part Of A Solution

I know, sometimes it seems like all we do around here is complain. But we’ve been working on a solution. With the help of a friend and a little AI magic, we are introducing an Alpine Meadows specific Lift Status page here at Unofficial Alpine. It simply uses some background processes to pull the information from the Palisades Tahoe webpage and sort it into the information you want. The data gets refreshed every few minutes, and it works in large format or mobile formats.

Navigate to the page on your mobile device, then click the “Share” icon at the bottom of the screen:

Then click “More” and scroll down to “Add To Home Screen”:

Now that we have reviewed that process, you can do the same thing to add an icon for the Unofficial Alpine site. There’s no need for us to make a mobile app.

I’ve already recommended using the Slopes app for tracking. As a bonus, it also includes a “paper map” feature that is Alpine Meadows specific without a bunch of scrolling. Kudos to the app authors for separating out Alpine Meadows as a separate ski area. I give Breakpoint Studio, the developer of the Slopes, a solid ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.

The Weather Ahead

It looks like we get a break in the rain tomorrow. Skiing could be on the interesting side where it does not get groomed overnight. We see more snow for Saturday and Sunday, with amounts ranging from 1 to 3 feet. Because this second storm has a weak AR component, all of the standard disclaimers apply regarding variable snow levels and how much snow falls. As of this afternoon, snow levels look to be right about at the base area of Alpine Meadows. Expect more of a Sierra Cement more so than powder, but that is exactly what we need to build the base right now. I plan to take some more Aleve and see you out there.