Skiing Has A Soul…This Is Where It Stands In Line

We posted this picture once already today, straight from my iPhone, just as a heads up to whoever was thinking about coming up to Alpine Meadows today. So now it’s time for the full report.

• Alpine started the day reporting 11-16″ of new snow, and it was easy to see that it was snowing at the base level via the webcam or remote sensors. Alpine Meadows also raised people’s hopes by putting Summit on the schedule.

• Squaw started the day with the top of the mountain closed and torrential rain at the base.

• Everybody that has a pass decided that today would be a great day for skiing and riding.

• It got insanely crowded around Alpine starting around 8:30 AM and both the Summit corral and Roundhouse corrals were soon full.

• Patrol evaluated the mountain and did some bombing, leading to the decision that the upper mountain would not open. This is not a mystery. A lot of heavy wet snow fell on top of a layer of light powdery snow, which was sitting on a firm icy layer, which was quite possibly sitting on weak facets from the pre-season storm. With winds at 60+ at the summit, wind loaded slopes were a sure bet. All of those factors lead to very risky conditions. The Sierra Avalanche Center concurs:

• Everybody at the Summit bailed and came to the Hot Wheels Line or Roundhouse Line, leading to the longest lines ever seen at Roundhouse, at times all of the way back to Tower 3.

• The smartest people of the day went to Kangaroo and started lapping Kangaroo.

• The Alpine Meadows parking lot was full, as was Chalet Road. Deer Park was loosely full and parking also filled at White Wolf.

• The Squaw Valley parking lot was also reported at near capacity. The wait for the shuttle to Alpine was reported by several people to be over one hour.

So how was the skiing? As predicted, it was not really a powder day. It was not even a cream cheese day. It was really more of a cement day. As long as you were the first person making a line, it was pretty fun. But if you were hitting ruts and berms from other skiers and riders, it was bone jarring. It did not take long for some of the groomers to develop some moguls that would rival Rosa Khutor.

There’s still plenty of obstacles lurking right under the snow off piste. But they are not the same obstacles we have learned to avoid. By tomorrow, obstacles should be much less of an issue.  Plenty of fun to be had skiing today but the lines just killed it. Today is a day that I would have normally skied bell to bell, even with the wet and soggy conditions. Normally those conditions would have kept the lines down to a minimum. Surely things would have been better if the people could have spread out to Scott or Sherwood….or Squaw Valley. Waiting in a long line to ride a chair that is guaranteed to stop several times, all to ski halfway down the mountain in snain conditions. I’ll do that all day without the lines.

Word on the street is that Alpine is hoping to get Scott opened after this storm cycle. Scott Chute is just starting to look rideable and other lines are looking good to go.

So in summary….skiing and riding was awesome, Alpine Meadows is awesome, the employees did a great job today. There is not enough available terrain at Alpine Meadows to serve both all of the skiers and riders from both Alpine Meadows and Squaw Valley.

#freealpine