Palisades Alpine, CA 3/4/2024
- Thread starter tseeb
- Start date
Did you actually get to ski at Palisades/Alpine yesterday?
tseeb
Well-known member
The rest of the story includes almost 7 hrs of driving to get from San Jose to Alpine via US-50 and South Lake Tahoe. Hindsight is 20-20, but when we went through Sacramento about 8 AM, I-80 was closed as it had been since Fri PM and there was nothing encouraging for it opening soon, only news that most of the snowblowers needed to remove the 10' of new snow over Donner Pass were down. We could have stopped and visited grand-nephew and other family in Citrus Heights, but my wife thought it was too early and we should push on. With a half-hour delay to get through chain control before 4,000', getting past a few slow trucks and then a long line of cars behind snowplow by following a Subaru through a small berm and passing them all on the right in a long passing lane, we got to South Lake Tahoe in 5 hrs, only about an hour longer than usual. But it took us two hours to get around E and N shore of Lake to Alpine.
I spotted John Webb while walking through breezeway entering Alpine. It had taken him 9 hours to drive from Nevada City to Tahoe City the previous day, He joined me on walk to Treeline Cirque, one of the two hi-speed lifts running, starting his day about 1 even though he'd spent night 10 minutes away. We took 3 laps on it finding mostly skied out, denser than expected new snow. We moved to Roundhouse, where I skied 9 laps. The first time up we rode with a guy who said he found good powder, so we followed him on a traverse across Waterfall, but did not follow him past row of "Stop - Closed" signs below the avalanche-prone Sisters. We found some short stretches of dense powder on that and other Roundhouse laps, but also found a few places where it was surprisingly scraped off or wind-blown and firm. I went down on one of these, but recovered in softer snow with no damage. We met up and skied with about 8 others from SkiTalk gathering including @jimk and his son who had driven from UT and dbostedo who is very active in the group and has greatly improved his skiing since I joined them 12 years ago.
I don't think you can blame the traffic on Ikon. Caltrans and NV DOT both had problems handling the biggest storm so far this Winter. CA-89 approaching I-80 (and I later heard some of I-80 over pass with someone who drove it Eastbound when 3 days of truck traffic was released) was only plowed a lane and a half wide forcing everyone into a merge before roundabout. A lot of my delay getting around the Lake was due to a Safeway truck that I could not pass on US-50 in Nevada as it was not plowed two lanes wide, then there were always vehicles in opposite direction where there were short straightaways for illegal passes on NV-28. I got past Safeway truck using Lakeshore Drive through Incline Village and then got past another truck with a big line of cars behind him in Kings Beach by going three blocks to right of highway. On Tuesday, it took dbostedo 4 hrs to return from skiing Mt Rose (over pass that had re-opened during day after unusual multi-day closure) to Palisades due to a truck getting hung up on one of the roundabouts in Kings Beach that I had avoided.
No skiing pictures from Monday when it was cold, windy and snowed a little.
I spotted John Webb while walking through breezeway entering Alpine. It had taken him 9 hours to drive from Nevada City to Tahoe City the previous day, He joined me on walk to Treeline Cirque, one of the two hi-speed lifts running, starting his day about 1 even though he'd spent night 10 minutes away. We took 3 laps on it finding mostly skied out, denser than expected new snow. We moved to Roundhouse, where I skied 9 laps. The first time up we rode with a guy who said he found good powder, so we followed him on a traverse across Waterfall, but did not follow him past row of "Stop - Closed" signs below the avalanche-prone Sisters. We found some short stretches of dense powder on that and other Roundhouse laps, but also found a few places where it was surprisingly scraped off or wind-blown and firm. I went down on one of these, but recovered in softer snow with no damage. We met up and skied with about 8 others from SkiTalk gathering including @jimk and his son who had driven from UT and dbostedo who is very active in the group and has greatly improved his skiing since I joined them 12 years ago.
I don't think you can blame the traffic on Ikon. Caltrans and NV DOT both had problems handling the biggest storm so far this Winter. CA-89 approaching I-80 (and I later heard some of I-80 over pass with someone who drove it Eastbound when 3 days of truck traffic was released) was only plowed a lane and a half wide forcing everyone into a merge before roundabout. A lot of my delay getting around the Lake was due to a Safeway truck that I could not pass on US-50 in Nevada as it was not plowed two lanes wide, then there were always vehicles in opposite direction where there were short straightaways for illegal passes on NV-28. I got past Safeway truck using Lakeshore Drive through Incline Village and then got past another truck with a big line of cars behind him in Kings Beach by going three blocks to right of highway. On Tuesday, it took dbostedo 4 hrs to return from skiing Mt Rose (over pass that had re-opened during day after unusual multi-day closure) to Palisades due to a truck getting hung up on one of the roundabouts in Kings Beach that I had avoided.
No skiing pictures from Monday when it was cold, windy and snowed a little.
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