The Best Of The Worst?

I think I finally figured it out. It’s no secret that it has not snowed in weeks, therefore, conditions for skiing and riding are less than ideal. In a typical year, that means that people lose interest in skiing, or they go elsewhere. We’re not the only people saying that it’s been a rough start to the season. Using just a few minutes of time on Google, I was able to make a quick collection of articles suggesting that things are bad all over.

In Daniels Swain’s latest piece at WeatherWest.com, he also notes that the snowpack snow water equivalent is down all over the western US. Here’s the graphic he used to illustrate:

That said, note that just about the only green and blue dots, indicating almost average or better, are in the Tahoe region and southern Sierra. I asked ChatGPT to summarize the base depth at Alterra owned resorts in the western US during mid-January and here’s the results the robots came up with:

And now you start to see the picture. Palisades Tahoe/Alpine Meadows and Mammoth Mountain represent the best of the worst when it comes to snowpack. Typically if we are having a bad year, it’s still good in the Pacific Northwest and the Rockies. This year, nobody is doing great, but we are doing somewhat better.

This explains how parking reservations sold out lickety split the last two weeks, and the mountain had good sized crowds even though regional skiers may have given up for now. As I mentioned in my last report, our reader numbers give an indication of the current interest in skiing, and they are down. Locker room three was relatively very empty this weekend, with many families just skipping skiing this weekend.

Instead the mountain has been seeing this influx of people from other areas that are ready to put some days onto their Ikon pass, and things were looking bleak at their home mountain. Not only were things busy here this weekend, Mammoth was also seeing record crowds.

Fortunately things are starting to come around in Washington, Wyoming and parts of Colorado. Some of those areas likely now have better conditions than Tahoe. This weekend’s visitors likely committed to a Tahoe trip weeks ago. Hopefully crowds will even out a bit once we get past Presidents Weekend.

It’s Been Wild Out There

It’s not that there were record numbers of skiers and riders out there this weekend, because there were not. The problem is that much of the off piste skiing was not all that attractive. This was compounded in a huge way by the below freezing conditions yesterday and this morning, keeping much of the mountain firmly locked up. Somewhere around 98% of skiers and riders were using just a few main groomed runs. Fortunately the all day snowmaking yesterday made the snow surface much more user friendly in the key areas of Dancefloor and Weasel. Otherwise, things got frightfully slick just about everywhere.

Coincidentally it was California Ski Safety weekend and I felt about as unsafe as ever on the groomed runs. There was far less than the usual messaging this weekend. I was given a sample protein bar because our bar was down on the Roundhouse lift today. A broader safety messaging effort might have slowed people down this weekend.

One place where we saw people making good use of off piste terrain was at the “Alpine Cup” big mountain competition held on East Palisades. The informal competition offered skiers from 9 to 14 a taste of competitive big mountain skiing. Conditions seemed to offer some decent winterish snow, and it was fun to watch kids going for it. There was a small group of parents and friends cheering on competitors this morning. There may have been more that wanted to watch, but the slick conditions in Alpine Bowl and on Terry’s to get to the venue may have scared off some moms and dads.

It’s Do-Able

I spent the last two days looking for anywhere on the mountain that allowed me to skip most of the busy groomers. I know, my last report suggested sticking to the groomed slopes, but I know the mountain better than your average Joe. I wouldn’t call any of these areas good, but they were do-able. We have mentioned Rolls N Knolls, but VCSki would like us to start calling it Rocks N Rolls. We also found do-able snow on Fall Line, Yellow Chair Line and Hot Yellow. Yes, there’s also good snow in the D’s and along North Peril, but then you have got a lot of groomer between there and a reload onto the Summit chair.

We also did some comically bad off piste skiing too. One in particular was Sherwood Left Face, which has great sun exposure and smaller bumps. But the sun could not overpower the chilling east winds yesterday and it was like skiing permaplate. We laughed our way down. Unfortunately some people interpreted that as we were having fun, so they followed suit. On our next ride up Sherwood, we noticed several other groups that decided to try it themselves. They were on the struggle bus.

We caught up with Andy after lunch today, and he reminded us that he had been wanting to try out Gentian Gully, having not been there for a couple of weeks. Being good friends, we offered to supervise the expedition. Just getting past the patrol shack to the Experts Only sign was an adventure in itself.

Once we dropped into the gully proper through the big moguls, the skiing was actually pretty fun through the forest section. But we knew the exit would be gnarly. It’s a lower elevation and there’s exposed areas that get a lot of afternoon sun. We felt like a Promised Land exit was not a great idea. That leaves the Butcher Block gully or Lower 40 gully for exits. We chose the Lower 40 Gully, as the possibility of a slide for life was pretty good, even for experienced everyday skiers. There’s fewer trees below Lower 40 Gully.

Was it smart? Probably not, but we did survive. I’ll likely wait until it snows again before I ski Gentian Gully again, or at least a really warm day that softens the icy portions. It’s my absolute recommendation that you do the same.

We finished the day heading to Sherwood, where things softened about two hours later than normal due to the hazy filtered sun. We took a couple of laps on Robin Hood and a couple in Chute Zero before calling it a day to beat some of the traffic. I am now in the camp that I am not skiing the Sherwood Run groomer again until there’s more snow…too narrow and too many rocks. Hopefully we will get similar warming the next couple of days.

Snow?

Yeah, not really. The point forecast does call for a 20% chance on Wednesday, which is pointless. Here’s the PNA index for the next 16 days (the red lines indicate the different models). Positive means high pressure in the Pacific. Yikes.

See you out there….