Yes, We Also Wonder…

It was another very good midday week of skiing and riding at Alpine Meadows. When it comes right down to it, there’s not much to wonder about when it comes to the mountain conditions as they have been very consistent. Still it was a day of questions, like “Will it ever snow again?” and “What will it be like this weekend?” More on that later…

It’s been an odd week, with multiple microclimates around the mountain. That means that you can choose your own adventure, depending on whether you’re looking for spring conditions or winter snow. Both still exist.

At the top of the mountain, a persistent east wind has been blowing, keeping things cooler and preventing most of the snow from overheating. It been consistently running about 25-30mph, which is not enough to affect the Summit lift operations, nor is it stripping too much snow. For the fourth day in a row, I was able to find a nice chalky wind buff on Tower 19 across to Solar Flare. There was also some nice wind buff blown into Wolverine Bowl this morning. Soft winter snow still reigns in the D Chutes and Palisades zones. But the moguls are growing larger each day. The morning corduroy has been superb, and the low traffic means it has not been scraped off too quickly. Consequently, we have been stacking up a lot of Summit laps each morning.

Lower on the front side of the mountain, it’s quite a mixed bag. Looking at the overnight temperatures, there’s an inversion…kind of sort of. At around 4:00am this morning, the base area and Ward Peak were around 34°. Mid mountain temperatures were around 40° overnight. That leads to some crispy off piste conditions lower on the mountain. Groomed runs are also mixed, depending on their exposure to snowmaking last week. There’s tilled marbles in some areas, and soft corduroy in other areas. Spring slush and pre-corn are beginning to develop in sunny locations: Rock Garden, Lower Rock Garden, and the left edges of Yellow and Ladies Slalom.

South facing terrain is also continuing through the corn cycle. I advanced the ratings a bit today. Here’s the new chart:

There’s definitely microclimates that mean that not all south facing terrain is skiing good. As an example, over at Sherwood – Robin Hood was really nice today, probably rating 3 corns. Just to the west, Sherwood Face was not as good today as the last two days, likely due to overnight warmth. It was more slushy today, and I found myself leaving ruts. Bobby’s and Ridge Run both skied very well today. I never made it to Lakeview today.

Rocks…yup they are there. The rockiest places as of today: Sherwood Run, Sherwood Right Face, Fast Lane, Scotty’s Beam, Rolls and Knolls, Red Ridge, Ladies Slalom

One Of Today’s Questions

Lakeview started today with a status of “Delayed”, which left me wondering why, not that I had any interest in skiing Lakeview in spring conditions before noon-ish. I did see people on the runs and on the chair as I headed back from Sherwood, even though the status still showed “Delayed”. In the afternoon, after we did a few obligatory Scott laps, we planned to head to Lakeview – but stopped after getting the notification it went on mechanical hold. As we prepared to leave the mountain, Scott, then TLC, then Sherwood went on patrol hold.

Typically patrol hold is used when there is some condition that makes skiing unsafe, such as an avalanche. It can also be used when there is some sort of incident that requires a large patrol response, leaving areas of the mountain uncovered. My first guess would have been that a lift evac was necessary. That happened the other day at Heavenly’s Boulder lift. But lifts went off of patrol hold in less than 30 minutes, so that seems unlikely. Often we never know what happened, and I guess that is okay too. The status for Lakeview is now closed. Hopefully that is resolved soon, or at least before the holiday weekend. (The 4:00pm reset shows lakeview closed tomorrow 🙁 )

Honk! A Parking Traffic Jam

It’s Tuesday, the day the world pauses to make parking reservations for the upcoming weekend at Palisades Tahoe. For the third week in a row, it’s been a frustrating process. Sometime around 11:57, the reservation server at Honk slowed to a crawl.

At any rate, it took me 9 minutes to secure three reservations at noon today. It’s a process that is familiar, as I have now done it almost 45 times over the last three seasons. Last season, it would have taken me 90 seconds to do the same. In fact the whole system worked perfectly all of last season. As much as reservations are a PITA, last weekend was a good example of how it can help with over crowding and traffic.

Here’s the weird part, up until 3:00pm, free reservations were still available all three days at Alpine Meadows. As of 4:00pm, only Sunday is problematic. Something has definitely changed since last season! There’s question number two for the day.

Question number three is will it be super busy this weekend? The parking reservations have become a somewhat reliable answer to that question. With free reservations not instantly disappearing within a few minutes today, that’s a reasonable indication that numbers may be down for the weekend. Given the consistent messaging that no snow is in the forecast before the weekend, people may have considered other plans.

When Will It Snow?

I keep hearing that the 21st is a target date for the possibility of new snow falling in Tahoe, and that is from multiple credible sources. Taking a quick look at the PNA index, which is an easier indicator of such things, we are riding high and dry right now:

A positive PNA is indicative of ridging in the Pacific, which leads to dry conditions and warmer temperatures during the winter months. The different models are each represented by a red line going into the future. Most of them do indicate a trough moving in roughly 10 days out, but the strength of that trough is very doubtful. Looking at the last run of the GFS ensemble, it showed the potential for two inches of snow in the next 10 days and maybe 8-12 inches by day 16. That is not the game changer we are looking for yet.

I’m just going to enjoy what we have as long as we have it…see you out there.