If you ski Alpine regularly, there’s a good chance that you know or have crossed paths with Mark Fisher over the years. Mark was our first pass holder at Alpine to hit the 100-day mark in the Palisades Tahoe app this year. I met Mark at Roundhouse on a gorgeous spring-like day to take a few laps and talk about why he keeps coming back day after day after day.
Were you from Tahoe originally?
I was born in Southern California. I first came to Alpine Meadows in 1975. I was pretty much a rank beginner and fearful of everything. Skiing Weasel was a really big deal for me… I’ve grown a lot since then!
When did this become your permanent home?
I lived an hour north of Tahoe until 2003, at which time we moved to Truckee permanently. My son had joined the Freestyle team here at Alpine in 2001, so that’s when we became season pass holders here and we started skiing basically every available day. At that time, I was working as a public school teacher. I was a leadership teacher who happened to teach a lot of math and science along the way.
So your son really grew up skiing here!
Yes, and he still coaches Big Mountain here today.
Before you started tracking your days on the app, did you know how many days you were getting? Did you log it religiously?
I don’t think I hit 100 days until I retired from teaching. So for the last 7 years, I’ve been able to hit 100 days consistently. But before that, even as a school teacher, I would hit 75 days. I was taking a lot of days off to see my son compete.
Does it still feel like a big achievement to hit 100 days?
It is pretty routine for me now. I used to tell people that my lifetime goal was to have a 300 day season, but last year was my biggest season ever. I got 188 days, and I feel like that’s enough now. The season before, I skied every single day of the season: 153 days straight.
Do you have the same routine every day when you come to the mountain?
I generally get here way early. I have a group of people I hang out with in the locker room. We have breakfast together. It’s a good way to avoid traffic. There’s no other routine, though. It really depends on what conditions are like.
You don’t have to reveal your secrets, but do you have a favorite spot at Alpine?
Probably Gentian Gully. I did two laps there before we met up and it was good! Up top, I really like Sun Spot and I also like High Yellow Gully.
Do people recognize you when you’re getting on the lifts? Are you friendly with the operators and ticket scanners?
Employees definitely know me. Lots of members of the general public recognize me, too, but that is changing a bit as the clientele changes.
When you think back about all the time you’ve spent at Alpine, do you have a favorite ski season? Or a single standout memory?
They’re all good. I mean — OK, yesterday wasn’t that great since it was wet and heavy — but there’s no one thing in particular. I don’t ski as hard as I used to. I rarely do any hiking anymore, so I’m very careful about where I go. For me to hike High T, it has to be a really good day. So times have changed. I used to follow the Freestyle team around, and now I ski with people much older than me.
When did you decide to start your blog, Unofficial Alpine?
It started as a me doing the website for the Alpine Meadows Freestyle Team in 2008. They needed some method of communication. If it looked like Summit was going to be closed for the day, the Team Manager would have to call everybody, so we started a website as a source of information with those details. The coach wanted something with weather predictions and forecasts about what lifts might run. At that time, nobody was doing any blogging about that sort of thing. My buddy Andy had been sending emails out once a week or so, so we started publishing his stuff there, too. It has since morphed into Unofficial Alpine.
What’s something you want people to know about when they visit Alpine?
It is not the same mountain as next door. For people who have skied at Alpine for a long time, we chose to ski at Alpine because it wasn’t the same as Palisades.
