Feb 14-15: Midweek Freshies at Alpine & Palisades

This report was written by Rene Jerez

Foggy but good.

It feels so good to be back at my home mountain at Palisades after snowboarding in Central Oregon for a week! I started Wednesday off by going to the Alpine Meadows side as the resort was beset by extremely high winds and limited visibility and more lifts were running there than on the Palisades side. Unfortunately, high winds prevented the base-to-base gondola from spinning so it would have been difficult to hop over. Just like on Valentine’s Day last year there were snow showers at the base, and as I had been away during last week’s big storms I was shocked at how different the mountain looked – winter is finally here in Tahoe.

I started off with some laps down from the Roundhouse chair on the Rock Garden trail. There was a steady buildup of snow on the mountain, but unfortunately, visibility was limited and it was extremely windy. One huge plus about Alpine Meadows when it’s windy though is the wind does a very good job of pushing and moving around the snow as wind buff. When combined with guests skiing/riding over the snow and moving it this does a really good job of grooming the snow and preventing it from turning into hard pack. The snow around the then-closed Yellow chair was the best, especially on Ladies Slalom. Upper Weasel One was also seriously building up a lot of snow in the snow showers and was also fun to ride down. The park crew also have done a great job of expanding out the terrain park parallel to Tiegel, and a lot of the new features looked like a lot of fun. After getting in my laps on Roundhouse I ventured over to the Summit chair.k

Whiteout conditions at Alpine Bowl

Unfortunately, the Summit chair had total whiteout conditions at the top! What seemed like gale-force winds didn’t help either. I decided to play it safe and rode my board down sideways and slow enough I was falling on my butt a lot from losing speed. It did feel like Alpine Bowl had accumulated an insane amount of snow though, so when visibility improves for Friday I’d imagine this is where you want to be on the Alpine side if you want to get some serious fresh pow. I spent the rest of the morning and a bit into the early afternoon riding more laps down Roundhouse. The Dance Floor trail was getting completely covered in fresh pow and it was an absolute blast to shred on. As visibility wasn’t improving I called it an early day and got back to Reno before the resort got hit with a fresh foot of snow.

Fresh snow at the Palisades Base

On Thursday morning both sides of the resort had gotten hit with a fresh foot of snow! The temperature wasn’t too bad either at the Palisades base, with it being in the mid-30s and fresh snow showers continuing from last night’s snow deluge. To switch things up from my usual Palisades warmup routine this time I instead rode the Funi up and went straight to Gold Coast, and rode that lift up and did a very wide circuit down to Bailey’s Beach. There was so much fresh pow everywhere on the upper mountain, and especially in the beginner area. The topography of Bailey just seems to encourage a giant sink trap of wind blown snow to form which is something that you don’t really see at the beginner areas of other resorts. I rode down to Packer’s Downhill which also was just completely full of freshies and finished off with a run down Morning Side. There was also a nonstop cacophony of avalanche bombs to punctuate the early morning as ski patrol was busy clearing out Shirley Lake and Granite Chief.

After I rode back to the top, the Emigrant Chair had finally opened up and I headed up over there. Emigrant Face was really bumpy (But no moguls were forming yet) and full of bits of fresh snow still untouched and I was loving the surfing element I was getting from riding on it. I did quite a few laps up and down Emigrant Face and was surprised at how completely different it felt from two weeks ago. After that since visibility was still not great I did a few laps down Mystery and Emigrant Gully from Gold Coast and even in those areas there were still tons of freshies everywhere to ride on.

Riding down Gold Coast

After taking a break and a light lunch at Wildflower Bakery I came back to the upper mountain, and rode the Siberia Chair up in the hopes of shredding down the Siberia Bowl. Unfortunately visibility still wasn’t the best so once again I played it safe and rode over to Shirley Lake via Siberia Ridge. Even Siberia Ridge felt a bit iffy with visibility at times, but it was totally worth it when I got in my first run down Shirley Bowl. I hung out there for a few laps, and thought about hitting the Granite Chair lift but wanted to wait for Friday when visibility would improve. I finished off my afternoon with multiple laps down Mountain Run and Morning Side. By the end of the day the snow showers had finally stopped and the sun was finally starting to come out.

The last two days have been great on the mountain and I can’t wait to get a third day tomorrow when it should be cloudy with some sun. This President’s Day weekend should be awesome as well with up to three to four feet of snow projected. Stay safe coming up to the mountain and be sure to get in on all of that fresh pow!