Operations

Read our weekly Terrain Parks update, written by Terrain Parks Supervisor Jacy Lentini. We try to post updates as often as we can.

Palisades Tahoe plans to open tomorrow, Monday, March 4th. It is our goal to have a few lifts going at both mountains by 9am, but this is not a guarantee. We have to see what happens overnight, and delays are always possible.

We are going to do our very best to get chairlifts spinning tomorrow, and we will be aiming for a delayed opening time of 10:30am. Our teams have been playing catchup the past two days, but there is still a lot of work to do. We will be digging out for the foreseeable future. If you read our snow report today, you probably noticed that the snow numbers seemed low. We only reported 14 inches at 5am. In reality, we have received a lot more snow than this, but intense winds have scoured our plots (Winds on Siberia got over 190mph last night). This also means that there are very, very deep wind drifts across both mountains.

Our update today is essentially the same as yesterday: Due to extremely high rates of snowfall and winds over 100 mph, all chairlifts at Alpine will be closed tomorrow, Saturday, March 2nd. On the Palisades side, we are going to attempt limited lower mountain operations, with Resort Chair, First Venture, Far East, and Red Dog. Tonight is supposed to bring the strongest band of the storm, so we expect to have a significant amount of recovery work to do in the morning. We have had essential personnel on-hill all day, performing control work, maintaining access roads, and digging out chairlifts, but based on current conditions, if we are able to open at all, there will be significant delays.

Due to the large snowfall totals we are expecting (up to 50 inches in the Palisades base area in the next 24 hours) and the high rate of snowfall (up to 5 inches per hour) we have made the decision to keep Alpine closed for tomorrow, Friday, March 1st. On the Palisades side, we are going to attempt to open Resort Chair, First Venture, Far East, and Red Dog. You should expect that these lifts will be delayed, maybe even significantly delayed, depending on how much snow we get overnight. There is also a chance that Palisades will be fully closed once we assess conditions in the morning. Further down in this blog, there is a list of ways to get real-time information.

A massive storm is barreling towards Lake Tahoe, with the potential of 5-7 FEET of snow. While we’re thrilled about the prospect of deep coverage, we are preparing for challenging operational impacts, and we would like you to be prepared before you travel. There will be slick roads, reduced visibility, and closures on mountain passes that are pretty much guaranteed. Our recommendation: If you’re not up here by Thursday night, don’t try to come up to the Tahoe basin via Highway 80 or Highway 50 until the storm has passed through.

Here’s our latest update on Terrain Parks, written by supervisor Jacy Lentini. Please note that all Terrain Park operations are subject to change based on snowfall.

We are just a little over a week out from the Stifel Palisades Tahoe Cup, which means the Palisades base and Red Dog areas will be affected until the end of the event. Plus, we’ve got a LOT of snow in the forecast following over a foot of snow in the past 24 hours on our upper mountains.

Our percentage of open terrain has seriously increased this week following almost 50 inches of snow on the upper mountains in the past 7 days. If you got out there this week, you know that conditions (even when visibility was low) were absolutely incredible. Not only did the vast majority of our hiking terrain open up this week, but we’ll be adding Lakeview to the schedule starting tomorrow, too. We plan to groom Outer Limits and Mountain View. We will also have the Sherwood Shuttle running this weekend.