MAKE TAHOE DEEP AGAIN ~ 2016/17 OFISHUL SNOW/FOOD/WHINE & STOKE THREAD

[Eastern Sierra Skier]

It looks like it was a good sized one from the Sheriff's photos:

Shot this with the iphone today from Rose. Clear view of two ski tracks above the slide. What was really interesting was seeing tracks on exactly the same aspect and pitch farther out. Don't recall seeing those tracks yesterday. You would hope that people would realize "Same slope, same pitch, same aspect, same result"

[SchralphMacchio]

^thanks for posting that photo!!!! Very interesting. I suggest you email or upload to SAC to add to their incident report.
forecasters@sierraavalanchecenter.org

I started a nerd thread in the Slide Zone to talk about this current avalanche cycle, as it's very interesting to me.
http://www.tetongravity.com/forums/s...alanche-Cycles

[powdrhound]

Cars parked all the way to 88. Busy day at The Wood.

[hercule33]

Cars parked all the way to 88. Busy day at The Wood.

How were the conditions?

[reid]

I'll keep up my Debbie Downerism, but I think given the serious impacts of flooding and downed trees/powerlines to communities not necessarily directly on HWY88 but around it (Fiddletown, Ione, Rancho Murieta, Elk Grove, etc) I'm gonna keep my car off that road on Sunday/Monday and leave it be for the people and potential emergency services vehicles that may need to use it.

Stay safe everyone, I hope everyone is having good clean fun and won't be seriously impacted when shit hits the fan on Sunday.

^5 bud, hope to see you next weekend. My snow tires are itching for some snow.

[Paul Blart]

Just registered for my Avy 1 with DSAS, pretty stoked

[TahoeBC]

Not often I ski till 3:30 but today was good enough to do it at the Heave today. Both Mott and Killebrew popped today and happy we scoped out what slide beforehand though, cause at lot of stuff slid to an icy bed surface. I've never seen 3 foot crowns below the killebrew/Promised land traverse before, anyone thinking about Porkys should think again.

[PB]

Cars parked all the way to 88. Busy day at The Wood.

Biggest cluster fuck I've ever seen leaving Sugar Bowl today: all lots full and cars being turned away, parking insanity out on old 40, gridlocked heading east from 80 to the Sb Judah turn off .... what were these people planning on doing????

[SchralphMacchio]

In other news, there is an observation of whoomphing from today, at the Bear Scratch area up on SAC right now.
Interesting terrain choice given the 4 to 10' crown heights possible indicated on today's SAC Advisory on non-south aspects, at all elevations. Glad this person did not get into any incidents.

[mandudebro]

12th chair on KT, 15th-ish on Granite- worth every minute of the 3.5hrs waiting for those two laps. Thank you patrol. KSL- you can still go f#ck yourself.

[powdrhound]

How were the conditions?

Not as good as yesterday.
But truth, my legs were shot from yesterday. It may have been excellent on the backside. I am positive that thousands checked.

[Ottime]

Attention Alien KSL Lords of Alpine Meadows....

The Boss requires that you open the Scott chair side country tomorrow:




If you fail to do so, The ghost of Clarence will haunt you

Does the Ghetto now have controlled boundaries? Have not been there in many years, but that was never the case before.

[Ottime]

After Vail bought Kirkwood they connected it to the power grid (November 2014) significantly improving the safety and reliability of the electrical service.

I am not huge fan of Vail but I have to say that they run their resorts much better than KSL.

Vail had nothing to do w the grid connection. That was done through the power plant and home owners association. They are also the ones who paid (are paying) for it.

Vail has done very little to improve mountain operations as well. Nor has Vail improved consistency or communications. Sure, Vail put up a bunch of new signs, built a new bar and closed down the Inn. Other than the patrol shack at the top of 10, Vail has done nothing to improve KW.

[StormDay]

Does the Ghetto now have controlled boundaries? Have not been there in many years, but that was never the case before.

no. in fact the boundary by Gentian/Lower 40 was barely marked like normal today. If you do not know where to look you would never notice the signs.

[mmmm...pow!]

Biggest shitshow ever at Squaw this afternoon. Lack of even a single employee to help control traffic and many self entitled douchebags parking wherever and trying to cut around the lines of cars just made things a lot worse. Glad I wasn't skiing there today.
As far as BGs flood theory, that may be true, but from what I know the bigger factor for Reno was the fact that Tahoe was full and the gates at the dam wide open.

[mogul5480]

I thought KW was fun today. Got some good heavy pow in outer Pali and some punchy but smooth goodness in Vista. Snow-snakes abounded but plenty of soft landings. Avy-wise, the results of some of the control work on the backside were nuts. Absolutely massive 10'+ crown on the wave. 99 steps slid 5-10' deep 2/3 of the way down chair 4.

[South tahoe skier]

Im in this same boat, in/out Sac Airport with 2wd minivan (family of 5). If it looks like a storm on our days I cipher I'll buy chains; any recommended outlets between Sacramento airport / SLT? figure it's not wise to try buy ahead of time make/model etc.

thanks!

the Walmart in placerville usually carries chains. That's gonna be your cheapest option

[NorCalNomad]

In other news, there is an observation of whoomphing from today, at the Bear Scratch area up on SAC right now.
Interesting terrain choice given the 4 to 10' crown heights possible indicated on today's SAC Advisory on non-south aspects, at all elevations. Glad this person did not get into any incidents.

That also made me raise an eyebrow, I would have expected more details or photos from someone who had gone out there to inspect conditions

[hercule33]

Vail had nothing to do w the grid connection. That was done through the power plant and home owners association. They are also the ones who paid (are paying) for it.

Vail has done very little to improve mountain operations as well. Nor has Vail improved consistency or communications. Sure, Vail put up a bunch of new signs, built a new bar and closed down the Inn. Other than the patrol shack at the top of 10, Vail has done nothing to improve KW.

I don't know if this article is just marketing by Vail but it suggests Vail had at least part in the power plant.

https://www.kmpud.com/news/kirkwood-...ntal-benefits/

And at least with Vail, lifts run and open on time at Kirkwood. When chair six broke earlier this year, it got fixed quickly.

I don't love Vail but I appreciate that they didn't completely ruin Kirkwood. It's not like the first thing Vail did after buying Kirkwood was try to build a huge village and water park while neglecting mountain operations.

[powpig]

And the money holds have been a god damn joke................
Several days spent skiing sweet conditions under the Solitude chair and having to hike back over to Shirley. But there's always some fucking excuse. Bullshit. Things like lift issues occurring... which, well, yeah, that happened after they fired all of the experienced lift people (who knew the quirks) to cut back costs. No more excuses - sick of it.

Go back in this thread to Wednesday morning where I said they would pretend to open Squaw just to pull people into the village, then wait a few hours, then call it a day with nothing opening. That's exactly what happened. They're trying to squeeze out every dollar they can like a bunch of money grubbing assholes. There was NO WAY in hell those lifts were going to spin.

Most of us know people who work there... surely I'm not the only one who's heard firsthand complaints of short staffing.

I've been skiing Squaw for 35 years and have had a pass there most seasons for the past 25.
Everything you just described I saw all during the 90s when Cushing ran the show. It sucked then and it sucks now even more because there's more folks trying to ski there. But it's certainly nothing new.

My gripe with KSL is more personal, I hurt my hip and had surgery in Dec a couple years ago. I did not use my pass a single day that season, not once. Got the letter from my doc submitted, Squaw basically told me to fuck off. Told me I should've bought the pass insurance. I told 'em they didn't offer insurance for the Bronze pass. I got nothing, and I know from plenty of folks I've talked to, it wouldn't have gone down that way under the Cushing regime.

[powpig]

Shot this with the iphone today from Rose. Clear view of two ski tracks above the slide. What was really interesting was seeing tracks on exactly the same aspect and pitch farther out. Don't recall seeing those tracks yesterday. You would hope that people would realize "Same slope, same pitch, same aspect, same result"

Fuck, I was parked right there just minutes before.
I left Rose about 11:45 and as I headed up the hill, traffic was stopped. I sat there about 10 min. And I mean RIGHT THERE, I was checking it out today. Supposedly that slide came down just after noon. Maybe I need to keep the beacon on even when driving now?

[TahoeJ]

Everything you just described I saw all during the 90s when Cushing ran the show.

Tell me more about how Cushing impacted Alpine Meadows in the 90's...

That's my biggest beef of all- they aren't just screwing up Squaw but both mountains, largely due to the lack of competition.

Also, when you're selling more season passes than ever before it's doubly important to get as many lifts open as possible and it makes money holds or lengthy delays due to short staffing even less acceptable.

Cushing had his flaws and they are well documented, but at least he was in the uphill transportation business and not just trying to sell as many condos as possible while making Truckee traffic an even bigger shit show.

[old goat]

It's not just this last "massive" (ie normal for anyone who's been around Tahoe for more than 5 years) storm. What about Wednesday (I think)--I skied fresh snow at Alpine, Summit running, windy but nothing close to bad, meanwhile Squaw had the entire upper mountain on wind hold. And I could give a lot of other examples of operations cutbacks going back to the start of the season. Of course avy conditions are dangerous and I respect that patrol won't open stuff until conditions are safe. The question is--why are things not safe? When I left Squaw at 1 Headwall chairs were still all at the bottom. Granite was turning but had not yet been bombed that I could see. The impression I get is that they aren't calling in as many patrollers as they have in the past to do snow safety, not calling in extra lift ops to get the lifts deiced and dug out, etc, etc. Up until now I have been willing to give KSL the benefit of the doubt as far as tough conditions, takes time to get the mountain open, but for those of us who have been skiing Squaw and Alpine for a long time--it is definitely taking longer to get the mountain open.

Parking was a shit show but can't blame that on KSL. Just a lot of demand. People were moving cones to create parking spots and making navigating the parking lot tough--scary walking through the lot to Far East on bumpy ice with cars going by too fast inches away--I started doing the fucking cyclist thing --taking up the whole lane. When I left at one they were holding traffic, or metering it, at the bottom of SV road. The other day I was bitcing about a car doing 20 with chains on on the dry pavement and refusing to pull over on the shoulder. Today there were 5 between SV and Truckee. BTW--there were no cars parked at any of the backcountry access points along 89 between Truckee and Squaw either this morning or this afternoon, I guess people are taking the avy situation seriously. (What's parking going to be like when all the parking is in garages under the condos--or out by 89?)

AFAIC there should be no development in the Truckee Tahoe area, except for high density workforce housing, until there is a comprehensive transit system--paid for by the developers and by Placer County and Truckee who will get the tax revenues from the development.

The skiing was great, btw, the heavy snow dried out overnight. The steeper stuff especially was good. And with KT open people who finally got on the mountain were happy campers--even the long KT line was mellow.

I feel bad ranting like this because I had a really good day of skiing. Wish these legs weren't so damn old. I was standing at a side entrance to Chute 75 a little below the top, guy drops in from the top and as his skis hit the snow he calmly says "Wow". Pretty much sums it up.

[snapt]

To be fair ABC hardly if ever ran pre KSL when I had Alpine passes? Gave that up for SB after the merger and never regretted it. Was on a chair with Rhalves once who summed it up perfectly saying "I go to Squaw to socialize in line, I go to SB to ski."

[LightRanger]

I recall that about ABC too. That's a great line from Rahlves.

Check this photo Quinner posted on FB. Caption said it was taken at Kirkwood. Maybe the crown at The Wave ottime mentioned earlier? Seems like that area probably gets more loaded up than any other at KW in conditions like we've had the last few days.