Seeing the sun out today after a warm, wet storm day yesterday was nice. Palisades Tahoe received 8″ of new snow in the last 24 hours. Luckily, the temps dropped overnight into the 20s, so the top layer of snow was nice and cold over yesterday’s wetter snow.
This report was written by James Yim.
I was uncertain what the skiing would be like down low after seeing rain to the base area yesterday, but I had high hopes for the upper mountain. My first run down the Dog Leg was treacherous, as there was fresh snow on top of very firm ice moguls. I nervously skied to KT to test some west-facing slopes until the upper mountain opened. West Face delivered some great cold turns up high, but we felt the ice moguls underneath toward the bottom.
By about 10am, the Funitel, Gold Coast, Big Blue, and Shirley opened up, so we ventured up high with hopes of Headwall and Granite Chief. Shirley was the best option available when we got up there, and the turns were great. You could see some groomer lines on the main groomed runs, but there were a few inches of cold snow on top. The two runs we did there were cold, grippy, and delightful.
After the second Shirley chair ride, we saw Headwall loading and safely booked it down to the chair. There was plenty of great snow to ski on; my favorite run on Headwall was Hogsback today.
We finished off the day by returning to KT to ski the snow that had been chopped up. West Face was skiing like a dream in the afternoon, and I heard that Chute 75 was also skiing great.
It was nice to have a little break from the storms with a bluebird day today before more storms return tomorrow.
