At Least It Wasn’t Busy

Usually when I drive to Alpine Meadows alone, there is some sort of soundtrack playing in my head. You might remember on one particularly busy day last season it was Crazy Train. Today, the song that played in my head, as the wipers erased the rain on the windshield, was Frontier Psychiatrist (The Avalanches). It has a catchy repeated refrain, “That boy needs therapy.” You have to wonder why anyone would want to go skiing on a rainy day where snow levels approached 10,000 feet.

The answer is simple, one of the UA interns was planning on going today and needed a ski partner. Skiing in the rain can be okay, as long as you understand the consequences. Our choices for the day were limited to Subway, Meadow, Hotter Wheels and Roundhouse. High winds, and presumably avalanche danger, kept other lifts closed. Poor visibility above 7800′ also would have been a factor.

The status for Roundhouse showed “windy conditions”, and a big gust as we walked out to the snow convinced us to go to Turbo Weasel. It was pretty much us and two other people for the first four runs. The freshly groomed snow skied fun and reasonably fast. Once that snow started getting pushed into looser piles, it soaks up water like a sponge and gets much slower. I am experienced enough to know that you don’t go off piste in the rain, unless you want a ski ripped off your foot.

We moved to Roundhouse for the last couple of runs and found it was less windy than TLC, or the base area or the parking lot. Steeper slopes gave a bit more speed. By lap number 6, my gloves were dripping wet, and water had found its way through the zipper of my shell and was working its way through my mid layers. We called it a day.

What Is Your Rule?

I’ve heard various rules about how many runs are required to “count” as a day of skiing. There’s two that I hear most people go by:

• You must ski at least 5 runs, not including any surface lifts.
• You must ski longer than your drive time. In my case, thats about 45 minutes round trip.

I succeeded on both of those counts today. We did a sixth run because “the intern” lives a bit farther away from Alpine Meadows. The other common rule I hear is that you don’t have to go skiing when it rains. I do know that my gloves and helmet were 100% soaked, and the heater in Locker Room 3 is still broken. That meant hauling things home to get them dried out.

My guess is there were fewer than 100 total skiers on the mountain today, not counting employees. It was a far cry from Saturday, which some people have said was the biggest day ever at Palisades Tahoe/Alpine Meadows.

How Is This Impacting The Snowpack?

It’s not great. Since midnight 1.5 inches of rain has fallen at the base area. Yesterday at this time, the base area auto sensor at the bottom of Roundhouse estimated 71″ of snowpack. Today it is showing 62″, which is a significant drop. The other day I asked ChatGPT to estimate the amount of snow loss we might expect from this storm. After plugging in the anticipated rainfall, temperatures and elevation, the estimated loss was up to 30% loss. Yikes. We can’t afford all that many storms like this! The upper mountain is doing better but not fabulous.

Wednesday Morning Update: The rain totals from this system are now at 3.7 inches at the base of Roundhouse. The automated sensor now shows 56.7 inches at the bottom of the mountain. This is a roughly 20% reduction at the base. This is the time to remind you how often I tell you that AR events are difficult to forecast. Just a small adjustment to the jet stream, like 50 miles can make a huge difference. We went from being on the southern perimeter of the stream to right in the firehose. This was the image I included in my Sunday post. Ugh.

There was a lot of hype generated last week, as there was a claim that Palisades Tahoe got 115″ of snow out of that last system. I am not sure that I agree with that number. As that snow has consolidated, the upper mountain does not look all that much different than it did before. Looking at the actual scientific measurements, here’s the latest Snow Water Equivalent data from the Palisades Tahoe plot:

Skiing at Sherwood yesterday, we noted that rocks and dirt were already returning to the groomed run. Even without rain, we are already at that time of the year where new snow goes away fast just due to the higher angle of the sun in the sky. I am a little bit worried about what that side looks like when we can get there again.

So far this storm is basically on track. Rain will continue tomorrow morning, theoretically ending around noon. Do I have the discipline to wait and go skiing in the afternoon? Or will I show up for another rainy morning? I think I know that answer.

Thursday into Saturday looks mostly sunny and warmer and better for skiing. As we get into next week, there is a system that is looking a bit stronger than it did two days ago. It doesn’t look like more than dust on crust just yet, but it bears watching.

Skiing is fun…see you out there.

---

Yes, I have eclectic musical tastes. The song Frontier Psychiatrist was on the soundtrack for Matchstick Productions “Ski Movie III”

Hey the new stickers are now available on our Stickers page!!