JANU-Buried!
We received nearly 3 feet of snow in 24 hours, which brought our storm total up to 7 feet. Let’s briefly discuss today’s operations and what’s in store for the weekend.
Today’s Word at Squaw Valley
Today was a historic day with control work. The storm came in heavy and strong and dropped 7 feet of snow between January 2-5. As Curtis Crooks, Director of Patrol stated, “We had to shoot things 2-3 times to get results. We rarely do that. We had to take our time to see what kind of results we could get. I saw things go up there that I haven’t seen in years.” That’s saying something since Curtis has been with our team for 35 years. This storm also brought winds that reached 137mph and hammered lifts with snow and ice.
Our teams came in at 6am to get organized and deploy out onto the mountain to do their control work. Today was certainly an all hands on deck situation.
KT-22
KT-22 takes a whole day to open. And while teams were working on KT-22 today, it’s not on the schedule for tomorrow because the road on the Saddle still needs to be cut. There were some complications with doing so today, so the swing and graveyard shifts will come in tonight and give it another go.
Headwall & Granite
Headwall experienced extremely high winds at the top, so we had to take chairs off the line. The storm essentially turned Headwall into a “frozen ice cube” as our mountain manager put it. Check out the snow loaded chairs at the base this morning. Our teams are working on getting this open as well, but putting chairs back on the line and setting up the terrain will take some time, which is why it is not on the schedule for tomorrow.
Granite Chief had some mechanical issues, but we expect those to be wrapped up by tomorrow morning. Since the chair was not operational, our patrol team was not able to do their control work in this zone. They will start tomorrow morning and hope to make quick progress. We should have an update for you on terrain opening by end of day tomorrow.
Today’s Word at Alpine Meadows
Alpine was able to open terrain relatively early given the conditions today. The plan for tomorrow is to operate the same lifts, which are scheduled to open at 9am. The exciting news is that we are scheduled to open Sherwood and Lakeview on Saturday, weather and conditions permitting.
