Squaw Valley/Alpine Meadows 1/18-1/21/16

I'm out in Tahoe, but staying at amazing place with good wifi, so here's a TR for today. I'll try to find time to do it again the next few days, but no guarantee.

Today was pretty gray. We started at Squaw, but only the Funitel and "Red Dog" were open. Only Mountain Run (haha) was open off the Funitel, and everything off the groomer track was hardback death. Lower elevation stuff was not horrible, but there was a race cutting off all of the good terrain. Here's the only pic I got from Squaw:



Then it started to rain, so we decided to take the shuttle over to Alpine Meadows, hoping that they'd have more terrain open. It was raining when we got there, but snowing from mid to the top. We took a break and had a beer at their mid-mountain beer and pretzel shack, waiting for the snow to pile up to make the place skiable:



They closed the Summit chair and the chair next to it (Roundhouse) for wind, so we really only had 3 chairs available to us: a slow fixed grip triple (Hot Wheels), a slow double that went a bit higher (yellow chair) and the Sherwood chair, which could only be accessed by a long traverse from the top of the Hot Wheels chair. Judging wind direction, aspect (southern facing slopes had a harsh crust), and snowfall, we found the best spot on the mountain was a pitch that went off the Sherwood, back towards the Hot Wheels, meaning we had to take two lifts and do a slow, skating traverse to reach what we wanted. But it was worth it:









So it was a pretty good rest of the day. And it hasn't really stopped snowing since then, so tomorrow's report will be even better... If I write it.

Glad someone got out there..
Looks like big snows are on the  way...

The atmospheric river is flowing again!  Hope it delivers snow in a way you can use it.  4-6 feet through Saturday above 5k without any crazy winds.....that's a forecast that could work for you without shutting things down.  Good luck!!

This report is sweet MC.  Working it to find and get the goods. Looks like the slopes were empty too.  True?

Who are you skiing with, if you care to share?

Looking forward to seeing part II of this report....

Yes, more please!

Sweet. Im on their email list from last spring. 15' already in january. 1 foot overnight and 4-7 FEET more through the weekend. Winds could be an issue but I could deal with those issues. Enjoy MC.

Nice. Way to get after it

Matt you just won the fucking Power Ball Lottery of Powder..
From today thru Sunday is gonna be insane..

Matt, looks like you nailed it on the snow. If the winds die down try and hit Alpine early as Squaw tends to be slower opening the upper Mtn on a powder day, much more Avy work to do than Alpine. If Sherwood express opens up you can do laps on that until your legs burn up. If the hold opening that try the Scott chair. Skiers right of it has lots of nice shots of steeps but not to long runs, can't go wrong anywhere on a powder day.

Another 2 feet and KT-22 opened today. Matt?

Hope today was a good day on the hill!  Ominous operations forecast for tomorrow.....expecting winds of up to 120 mph on the upper mountain at Squaw.  I really want to get out there.  So much so that I just booked a ticket for the first weekend of February.  Thing is.....Squaw scares me.  Seems any time there is weather, which you generally want, it limits operations.

KT-22 was indeed open today. We jumped right on it. Here was my first run:



We just kept lapping the KT chair, doing the powder race that every big name western resort seems to have. People were going balls to the wall to book it as fast as they could to their favorite stashes. Fingers, Cliffs, and everything else visible from the lift all got skied early. We found our best snow in the morning over by east face gully. We found a spot that people bypassed and ripped untracked turns 3 times in a row. Then we went into some trees that had been tracked out, but were still super fun.





The line at KT-22 got pretty long, but we had good luck going through the singles line:



We kept searching for more fresh, and found some on the backside of the KT lift, near rock garden:



We skied one more over on our favorite little spot, but most of the bottom was getting skied off by that point:





So we went in for a late lunch around 1:45 and got some beers. The Funitel was open, and we hatched a plan to hike and access some of Broken Arrow. But then we saw the Tram was running. So we took a ride.



The Tram was pretty empty. So empty, they let me put on my own music. I pumped myself up for the run with some Run The Jewels. Here's us pulling into the top:



We did have a little bit of a bootpack to get up to the good section of Broken Arrow, but we were rewarded with the runs of the year so far:









Untracked Pow at 3:45 at Squaw Valley was pretty awesome. And so was the Apres scene at the Chamois:





These first couple of days, I was skiing with my brother (who lives here now). The next couple, a few more people might join us, depending on pace and ability. Yes, we are worried about getting to ski tomorrow and about getting out of here on Sunday. We'll see how the rest of the week goes.

Very nice, send some our way

Nice!!!

Look at all that snow

Incredible. You got some memories there, Matt. Keeping my fingers crossed for the rest of your trip.

WOW. GREAT shots.  Something about your approach to skiing has me rooting for you to score big.

Good luck the rest of the trip, snow, travel and all of it.