It’s Groundhog Day But Things Are Changing

It’s Groundhog Day and Punxsutawney Phil did see his shadow, indicating that we could see some changes to the weather forecast. We are also announcing a change to our branding today, but you may have already noticed that in the logo above. It’s been a long time coming. More on that later.

First let’s talk about the skiing today. It’s Groundhog Day, and it is pretty much exactly the same as yesterday, and the day before that and so on. Thank you to the mountain ops team that is continuing to make the best of the meager snowfall this season. Okay on to the other news…

It’s Time To Fully Honor The Alpine Meadows Name

As of today, we are rebranding the website to Unofficial Alpine Meadows. It’s something we should have done the minute that the Alpine Meadows name and logo were removed from the front of the lodge. One of our basic tenets here as been to protect the legacy of this place we call home, Alpine Meadows.

Back in 2008 when we started this site, there was never even an inkling that someone might come along and consider a new name for the ski area. But back in 2008, the screen resolution of both home computers and early mobile devices was very limited. Although Andy’s original email list was called the “Unofficial Alpine Meadows Ski Report”, it was just too unwieldy. Even the name Unofficial Alpine Meadows could not fit as a header on a typical web page. Early testing showed that it caused big problems when saved to your bookmarks menu. So the site was born as “Unofficial Alpine” and has stayed that way for almost 18 years.

Times have changed. Alterra has been working on erasing the legacy of Alpine Meadows for several years, hoping to make Palisades Tahoe and Alpine Meadows one big happy mountain. It started with removing the signage from the lodge, parking lot and at the bottom of the road. Websites were updated and employees were forbidden from using the word “meadows.” The new website and Ikon Pass app avoid dividing the mountain into Palisades Tahoe and Alpine Meadows, instead creating confusion with 8 peaks, a bowl and parks.

Times have changed. The resolution of my laptop screen has quadrupled or more. The original iPhone has advanced 16 generations. About 70 percent of all visitors to our site are now on a mobile device, where people save sites as an icon rather than a bookmark in a browser. We are ready for this change.

How Can I Access The Site?

Here’s a handy dandy guide to accessing the site after this rebrand:

unofficialalpine.com	The old URL will continue to work probably forever. There’s thousands of links to this site across the internet and there is no reason to risk breaking those connections.
unofficialalpinemeadows.com	The new URL will also work. As of now it just redirects to the old URL, so it will be slower. Use it if it makes you happy.
unofficialpalisadestahoe.com	Fun fact, we have owned this URL since the day the new name was announced. It also just forwards to the original URL. We have held on to this name hoping that someday, someone will want to jump in and do a complementary site for the place next door. So far, nobody wants to do that for free.
unofficialalpinelifts.com	This is the link to our popular “mobile app” page. This link will not change. However if you delete the old version and then save it again, it will have a new icon and a new suggested name.

Stickers Are Now Cheaper

Hmmm, part of this rebranding means that we now have a back stock of stickers with the old logo. My accountant noted this morning that new stickers will need to be ordered. They would be happier if we sold most of the old stickers. So I have reduced the price to basically postage and handling to clear out the old stock. The new shiny stickers are now $1.00 each and they do say “Always Alpine Meadows”. The older B&W stickers are marked 3 for $1.00, but I always include extras of those. Order stickers here.

Support Alpine Meadows Where You Can

We wish that we could sell original Alpine Meadows stickers and clothing here. Unfortunately we cannot, as Palisades Tahoe retains the trademark to the logo. It does bring hope since they have not abandoned the trademark, they are considering the possibility of bringing it back. I’m not going to lie, there’s definitely some bootleg goods out there for the finding, but we can’t be a part of that. If you see a sticker or clothing you like, ask the owner where they found it.

You can also help by always referring to the mountain as “Alpine Meadows” yourself, and politely correcting others that use the shortened version or the wrong version. I am proud to say I have never stuck a Palisades Tahoe sticker on anything I own, and I have always turned down free Palisades Tahoe schwag of all kinds. The one exception is my 100 Days t-shirt from two years ago, and I covered the Palisades logo with an Alpine Meadows sticker before I wore it last season on my 100th day.

Hopefully The Weather Is Changing

There’s still some hope for some snow as we get way out in Fantasyland. Some of the models are showing the possibility of some wintery weather around mid month. But that is way out in Fantasyland around day 14, so we cannot count on that yet. Here’s the latest run of the GFS for 24 hour snowfall over the next 16 days:

Here’s some caveats to ponder. This change was first advertised by the Euro models starting about 4 days ago. The GFS model started picking this up yesterday. Now the Euro has somewhat backed off a bit. That’s concerning. Looking at the simple PNA index, which we showed trending downward two days ago. I’ll spare your eyes today because it shows PNA getting neutral then going back positive. Ugh. Still having some snow in the models is better than absolutely nothing.

I saw the seasonal stats for Alpine Meadows today, as measured at the base of Roundhouse. The January snowfall was 37.5 inches, bringing the seasonal snowfall to 89.5 inches or just 52% of average. Thank heavens for snowmaking and snow farming!

Skiing is fun…see you out there.