California/Nevada 2017-18 Tahoe Ski Resorts/Conditions/Meetups Thread....

[Philpug]

I'm guessing it's whatever new thing from Blizzard that keeps getting placed in my Facebook feed?

Ahhh. Nope.

 

[Tony]

My son was first in line for the Tram out of Heavenly's CA base on Sat. He said there was not really any snow at cabin a mile away, but "The snow was great" on the mountain. No pictures from him so far, but found this one of Milky Way Bowl posted on OpenSnow.
You can thank me for missing this storm and any more in the next week as I am in Mexico. It was a little chilly (got into high 50s) where we had dinner by river a mile or so from coast so we had to get up and dance to very good John Fogerty imitator to warm up. Highs are supposed to be low to mid 80s all week.

 

[Tricia]

A fun run down Pioneer Glade at Mt. Rose with @Tricia. Real mogul hounds will find this pretty pedestrian but it's a big step for me to even think about it. Nice left over snow from Thursday night's snowfall. A little long because I'm a little slow. I apologize for the lack of good editing. I haven't achieved that level of AV knowledge yet!

And one of @Tricia cruising on the shorty Renoun Z90's. Note the intricate slalom course at the bottom! You may want to turn the volume down, lots of wind noise. Good snow though!

Dang that was a fun day.
I have a review coming for the 157 Renouns and the 79mm DPS Alchemist.

 

[SSSdave]

The current Sun 3am NWS discussion is forecasting only a couple inches at Tahoe Crest areas through Monday and a low confidence 12 to 18 inches for the larger Thursday storm. But that could easily be a foot more at the crest if we get lucky. Looking at today's satellite, it does appear we our on the margins of today's jet stream storm flow.

The best local Tahoe snow enthusiast source for weather information is OpenSnow because BA with much use of honest relative terms, provides considerable more snow insight than the Reno NWS technical forecast discussion though both have value for those like this person. An additional source of insight few of you are probably familiar with is the jetstream forecasts at this link:

http://virga.sfsu.edu/crws/jetstream.html

One will need to select the Eastern Pacific & Western North America items. Also the Northern Hemisphere items are most useful for showing what is moving across the hemisphere in the long range and one will be able to understand what one is looking at much better with some atmospheric's basics that I added 3 short Youtube tutorials at in this jellybeans thread:

https://forum.pugski.com/threads/how-to-forecast-the-snow-part-2.8141/

The Nevada side of Heavenly per BA's confirmation did indeed receive a foot Saturday night while every other resort just a piddly inch at most that is an interestingly phenomenon that I recall from the past with inside slider systems but I'd bet this was a record for such. Accordingly will drive up Monday pm to ski Nevada Heavenly Tuesday and maybe Wednesday then maybe get a cheap motel in Carson City. Thursday is forecast to be the main storm event and am leaning towards a day at tree sheltering Northstar as wind will be an issue. Thus a good day to practice storm skiing in full hard core battle gear. Love it! Storm will linger into Friday and if we are lucky may finally get beyond the plague of thin conditions. I haven't skied either HV or NS in over a decade where much has changed so that should be interesting.

 

[JayT]

The bulk of the storm is wednesday afternoon / evening. It'll still be snowing Thursday but I suspect it won't be nearly as windy compared to Wednesday.

I'll be at Northstar or Sugar Bowl Wednesday, then Sugar Bowl Thursday if anyone is around and wants to make some turns.

 

[SSSdave]

Yeah Wednesday will likely be windy at exposed ridge lines. For what its worth 3 days out, both the ECMWF and GFS show the first precipitation north of Tahoe starting about 3pm to 4pm Wednesday that also reflects BA's "late afternoon". (Move the slider at the bottom to different dates/times and change between icons Wind and Rain/snow and Clouds at right.)

https://www.windy.com/?rain,38.784,-119.969,9

Thus a reason I'll more likely ski the lee side of prevailing southwest wind at Nevada Heavenly Wednesday too then escape easily quickly down to Carson City. Mid day 800hPa (6400 feet) winds down on the lower lifts also show staying below 11 mph that is trivial though show 50mph at the top:

https://www.windy.com/?800h,38.891,-119.923,11,m:eJ3acPg

It does show the main front with most snowfall Wednesday evening , then the GFS shows a showery period till dawn before another stronger period late morning Thursday, while the ECMWF shows not much in the wee hours till that second part comes in by early afternoon that doesn't clear out till the wee hours Friday. So much for day to day wobbling model forecasts haha. Won't believe anything till I see it and plans will change accordingly. Getting to Northstar over Spooner and then northward Thursday at sunrise could be unpleasant.

 

[Alexzn]

Some good tracks at Squaw finally. And the crowds disappeared completely. I managed to be one of the first people on Granite Peak in the morning and the snow was sublime.

 

[laine]

Dang that was a fun day.
I have a review coming for the 157 Renouns and the 79mm DPS Alchemist.

Looking forward to reading those!

 

[Philpug]

Rose was really good this AM...and the crowds weren't nearly as bad as I heard they were yesterday.

 

[skibob]

Yeah Wednesday will likely be windy at exposed ridge lines. For what its worth 3 days out, both the ECMWF and GFS show the first precipitation north of Tahoe starting about 3pm to 4pm Wednesday that also reflects BA's "late afternoon". (Move the slider at the bottom to different dates/times and change between icons Wind and Rain/snow and Clouds at right.)

https://www.windy.com/?rain,38.784,-119.969,9

Thus a reason I'll more likely ski the lee side of prevailing southwest wind at Nevada Heavenly Wednesday too then escape easily quickly down to Carson City. Mid day 800hPa (6400 feet) winds down on the lower lifts also show staying below 11 mph that is trivial though show 50mph at the top:

https://www.windy.com/?800h,38.891,-119.923,11,m:eJ3acPg

It does show the main front with most snowfall Wednesday evening , then the GFS shows a showery period till dawn before another stronger period late morning Thursday, while the ECMWF shows not much in the wee hours till that second part comes in by early afternoon that doesn't clear out till the wee hours Friday. So much for day to day wobbling model forecasts haha. Won't believe anything till I see it and plans will change accordingly. Getting to Northstar over Spooner and then northward Thursday at sunrise could be unpleasant.

windy.com is a very cool. Thanks!

 

[Philpug]

Weather feels like it is coming in now. Getting blustery and windy. There is a small drink advisory in the hot tub at Chez Ziggy.

 

[Andy Mink]

Weather feels like it is coming in now. Getting blustery and windy. There is a small drink advisory in the hot tub at Chez Ziggy.

Didn't get called to work?

 

[skibob]

Didn't get called to work?

What do you call managing drink safety in the hot tub?

 

[textrovert]

Daytrip to Alpine today.

Weather was all over the place- bluebird, partly cloudy, overcast flat lighting, back to sunny and then cloudy again

Conditions were very good. Snow from the last storm still soft due to the cold temps (24°F in the parking lot when we rolled in). Lots of lifts running- Meadow, Hot Wheels, Roundhouse, Summit, Kangaroo, Scott & Yellow - all turning.

The terrain under Yellow seemed then thinnest. Scott had only one groomed room down and a think bumpy run off the ridge. Alpine and Wolverine Bowls were looking good. The central funnel down to the base got crowded at times, but we never had to wait at any chair.

All in all, a great day on the mountain.

Edit: Added photo of a funny rainbow I spotted today

 

[luliski]

Trying to decide: Alpine or Squaw tomorrow?

 

[Philpug]

Trying to decide: Alpine or Squaw tomorrow?

13 hours in the car to Edwards Co. tomorrow....for us.

 

[luliski]

13 hours in the car to Edwards Co. tomorrow....for us.

I hope there's snow for you there!

 

[TallGuy]

It actually felt like winter today at Sugar Bowl. Nice dry snow that crunches when you walk on it and grips when you ski it. Sugar Bowl got a lot more terrain open during the last couple days, including all the north-facing groomed runs off Disney. Unfortunately, the Thursday storm was apparently not quite enough to fully lay a new layer, as many runs started exposing large icy spots in the afternoon. Any open mogul runs I tried had soft mogul tops but the downsides were icy, so that made for some pretty sketchy bump skiing. Nevertheless, we found some really fun groomers that seemed to not be exposing icy spots even at the very end of the day, with the best one being Montgomery off of Disney. The Disney Meadow was also fun -- laying out huge fast carving turns was great today in the Meadow area.

Conditions are definitely improving, but we need another few feet of high density snow to really cover up the exposed (or slightly exposed) rocks. Hopefully the Wed storm will get us a little closer to that goal.

 

[textrovert]

Trying to decide: Alpine or Squaw tomorrow?

Squaw definitely has much more terrain and variety open. Especially after today's Granite/Solitude openings.

Weekday too- so it won't be crowded.
You could probably get both in- Squaw in the morning, Alpine after lunch using their shuttle.

(Side note- it cracks me up that SquawAlpine puts the shuttle between the two as "open" and counts it on their list of chair-lifts running for the day)

 

[Mendieta]

It actually felt like winter today at Sugar Bowl. Nice dry snow that crunches when you walk on it and grips when you ski it. Sugar Bowl got a lot more terrain open during the last couple days, including all the north-facing groomed runs off Disney. Unfortunately, the Thursday storm was apparently not quite enough to fully lay a new layer, as many runs started exposing large icy spots in the afternoon. Any open mogul runs I tried had soft mogul tops but the downsides were icy, so that made for some pretty sketchy bump skiing. Nevertheless, we found some really fun groomers that seemed to not be exposing icy spots even at the very end of the day, with the best one being Montgomery off of Disney. The Disney Meadow was also fun -- laying out huge fast carving turns was great today in the Meadow area.

Conditions are definitely improving, but we need another few feet of high density snow to really cover up the exposed (or slightly exposed) rocks. Hopefully the Wed storm will get us a little closer to that goal.

This also describes Saturday! I didn't update my lunch report but Montgomery was the run of the day for us. The crowds were a little too much. We didn't even try Lincoln, the line was ridiculous and I was told the snow not that great. I saw two people taken down by boarders bombing down irresponsibly. We managed to find less crazy spots through the day but still had a couple close calls each.

Another run that was fun was the only run off judah after lunch. Fewer people and the midsection is wide and you could let'em run safely, choosing your lines away from others.

I was left with the impression that more runs could have been open, but it would have meant a lot of roping around the bowls which need more snow. I saw patrol scouting diligently in the bowls and I heard the rocks under the beautiful but thin layer of powder. I trust they are doing their best to open as much as they can.