We are now at 125% of our average snowpack for December, and as of this morning, we have seen 9+ feet of new snow since December 1... Is it too soon to start using #DEEPcember again? Our storm total now rests at just shy of 6 feet. With all this new snow, we have literally been digging ourselves out for the past few days. Now, with a few dry days in the forecast and a great base of snow, we are turning our attention to terrain expansion.
As expected, we had a few delays today while we finished up patrol work and cleared the mountain for snow safety. Alpine opened Roundhouse, Meadow, Subway, and Treeline Cirque to mid-station right at 9am. Summit followed soon after, and Treeline Cirque opened to the top just before 10:30am. At Palisades, after opening First Ventures at 9am, KT-22, Exhibition, and Resort Chair followed at 9:20am. We didn’t think we’d open the upper mountain until the afternoon, but by 10:30am, we had the Aerial Tram, the Funitel, Wa She Shu, Gold Coast, Shirley, Bailey’s Beach, and Mountain Meadow. 30 minutes later we added Big Blue, and at noon we opened the terrain for Tower 16 and Broken Arrow (not the chairlift).
A Heroic Effort
If you were in the Tahoe region these last few days, you know how much snow we saw over the weekend — nearly 5 feet of snow accumulated at 8,000′ since Friday! Backs and legs might be sore from all of the shoveling, but as skiers and riders, we know that is a very good sign.
Our ops teams battled out Mother Nature with heavy snowfall, significant wind (topping out at 165 mph!) and poor visibility — all for the love of sliding down snow! This is what we do. It’s what we live for. And we are so appreciative of the heroic efforts of our operations teams and all team members for giving it their all so that we could enjoy the magic of today. THANK YOU!
Photos taken by Blake Kessler this morning of our teams hard at work prior to the resort opening
Weather Outlook
We are going to be in a colder, dry pattern for at least the next week. Winds shouldn’t be bad, so there should be a lot of super fun, sunny skiing and riding to be had.
Lift + Terrain Updates: Alpine
- We will be adding Scott to the schedule tomorrow.
- We will be adding Sherwood to the schedule on Wednesday.
- Tiegel Terrain Park is open again.
Lift + Terrain Updates: Palisades
- Solitude and Siberia will be back on the schedule for tomorrow.
- Granite Chief, Emigrant, and Headwall are still a few days out from opening.
- The Terrain Parks crew is digging out in Belmont right now and will be building for the next few days. We expect to open the park here by the weekend if not earlier.
Red Dog Update
We received a few emails yesterday requesting an update on Red Dog. Red Dog is still under construction. We actually post a construction update every Thursday (sometimes Friday if we’re crunched for time) on our blog. The URL is always the same — We update that same page each week. Snow has slowed down the completion of the lift (we originally thought we would open the first week of December) but we are still on track to open soon. In the meantime, Red Dog terrain can be accessed from Resort Chair. To get to Resort Chair, we have shuttles running between The Village, Alpine, and Resort at Squaw Creek. The Alpine shuttle picks up right in front of the Breezeway, while the Palisades shuttle picks up across from Coffeebar.
The Base to Base Gondola Opens This Saturday
That’s right, this Saturday, December 17th, the Base to Base Gondola is finally opening. It will now be just a 16-minute ride between The Village at Palisades Tahoe and the Alpine Lodge. Saturday and Sunday both have fun celebratory activities going on, including a free concert from Aluna and Dillon Francis on Saturday, so be sure to check out our events listing and join in on the fun. If you’re curious about the history of the idea for the Base to Base Gondola, check out our latest Legends of Tahoe piece on the Lake Tahoe Ski Circus.
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