It Was A Big Weekend But A Good Weekend

If you look back at the historical records of visitation in Tahoe, the weekend before Martin Luther King weekend is nearly always big. It’s the first weekend after the Christmas holiday period, that people avoid due to being blacked out or just on general principle. For the same reasons, those same people will likely avoid the holiday next weekend. The quiet whispers were that the overall visitation at Alpine Meadows and the northern annex was over 20,000 skiers and riders on Saturday. The numbers seemed a bit lower today, but not by much.

You might think it was insanely crowded, but the thing is that it actually can work. The important thing is that both mountains be near 100% in operation. All lifts and terrain were open today at Alpine Meadows with the exception of Keyhole and Hot Wheels Gully. As long as you have some flexibility as to exactly what you want to ski, and have the ability to ski off piste, it can be okay. Truth be told, for both Saturday and Sunday, I skied more runs and more vertical feet than any other day this season. I’m glad it worked out this way.

There were a couple of scenarios where things can get a bit hectic:

• Lifts going on mechanical hold or otherwise not operating: The Sherwood lift had a hold for a couple of hours midday Saturday that put a big dent in uphill capacity. Lift lines grew long at all remaining lifts. The Sherwood closure also closed the High Traverse, which represents a huge amount of terrain that keeps people spread out, making other terrain more busy. A mechanical hold on the B2B in the afternoon resulted in a comically large line of people trying to get back to the other side in the afternoon. It was probably not comical for those that felt trapped on one side or the other.
• If you don’t know the mountain well enough to get off of the most popular groomed runs, it probably felt really busy this weekend. Those runs include Dance Floor (aka Red), Charity, Weasel, Werners, Alpine Bowl and Sherwood Run. It’s difficult to avoid Sandy’s Corner and the runouts to Roundhouse and Summit, but it can be done. Fortunately mountain ops is making progress on widening these runouts and covering the creek.

Mountain ops staff are still figuring out new corral configurations that work given the limited snowpack and large numbers of people. The Summit corral is a work in progress. Today it was set up extra wide to accommodate more lanes, eliminating “weird” merging. It was so wide that the passage between the corral and the Kangaroo lift was absurdly small, inviting potential collisions between skiers headed to the deck and those walking up to the corral. In contrast the new angled configuration for Scott was working well.

The height of the RFID gates continues to be a challenge. At Sherwood and Scott, they are appropriately low. At Summit and Roundhouse, they are still too high. This causes too many slow downs at the gate, resulting in groups of four or six falling apart. This is compounded by the 135° turn required at Summit which causes all sorts of chaos as groups round the corner. Some of the ops staff has been super effective at managing the chaos, some really need to up their game. Hopefully these kinks get worked out.

It’s Getting Warmer

It’s getting warmer each day and the snow is starting to transition. We were delighted to find nice winter snow on the newly groomed Sunspot this morning, as well as at Tower 19 once the corduroy got scraped off of the groomed runs. It was still delightfully chalky. But just before we went in for lunch, we suddenly felt “the turn”, where the snow started getting really clumpy and wet. Finding winter snow will be a growing challenge for any part of the mountain that gets any sun. Winter snow seekers will have the best results in the Palisades, High Yellow, Counterweight, and North Peril, as well as Gentian Gully.

For people that want to just rally the groomed runs, there is much more grooming being done, now that cats aren’t busy opening new terrain. Just about every normally groomed run is being groomed at this point. The exceptions are Kangaroo Ridge, Red Ridge, Ladies Slalom and that run we have called Maid Robin Tucks at Sherwood (lower edge of Sherwood Face). All of those areas are definitely lacking enough snow for grooming. There’s still plenty to choose from.

The First Corn-O-Meter Of The Season

If it is indeed going to be Juneuary, then you may as well embrace it. We noticed the first signs of developing corn today and that put a smile on my face. We have a couple of things going for us that are going to accelerate getting into a corn cycle. The first two big storms of the season were wet, heavy, dense snow. That along with a lot of traffic on the hill this weekend means that consolidation is pretty good in most areas. Typically we have to endure a mank cycle before we get a corn cycle. We see that when the snow is still airy and has not consolidated. It can get really icky sticky.

So here’s the rating for today:

The skiing was pretty good on all aspects of Sherwood Face this afternoon. I also greatly enjoyed Scotty’s Beam. These two areas have less skier traffic in common, so the corn has more time to cook. Ridge Run and Bobby Run also offered some early ripening quasi-corn. Night time temperatures should be could enough for surface freezes. It’s the repeated melt and thaw cycles that grow larger crystals that make for good spring corn conditions. It should continue to get better this week.

Diminished Hope For A Pattern Change

There was a time yesterday where things were looking hopeful for a pattern change that would bring more snow to Tahoe. The trough that was about 13 days out in my last report was almost inside of the 10 day window, which is a huge upgrade above Fantasyland. But looking at the models today, that storm has all but disappeared in the GFS ensembles. Here’s the last 10 runs for total snowfall out 10 days.

Honestly, it was never going to be anything big. But “Dry January” will continue in terms of snowfall, maybe not in terms of whiskey consumption. I am not panicking yet, things will hold up for quite some time. The true La Niña years generally offer mostly dry times with a few big storms scattered through the season.

Current coverage on the mountain is good from the top of Roundhouse up. Things are spicy both on piste and off piste below that elevation. I hit more rocks this weekend than I can count on two hands. Most of those were in the Fast Lane zone, the return to the Scott lift from Ridge and Bobby. I also tagged quite a few in the Rolls and Knolls area this weekend while avoiding Dance Floor and Charity. I am grateful for the burly bases of the Moment Deathwish skis, as I keep saying “OMG! There goes an edge”, only to find just a minor scrape. Consider rock skis if you like your skis pristine and like to go adventuring.

I will embrace some spring skiing, even if it is only January. See you out there. Is anybody going to read this? Heard there was a baseball game on TV or something…