Mt Baldy Attempt 2/16/09

[Aukai]

Ridiculous.

Woke up feeling good, decided to brave the roads.

Got off on Base Line after passing all kinds of carnage on the 210, including an overturned semi.

Snow levels below the village, 2WD cars spun out everywhere.

Get up the hill no problem, though casualties are mounting on the roads. See lifts running. Winds at the base nil. Feeling great.

Near the Notch it hits- Holy Hurricane, Batman. It's windy up there. About 4-5 inches fresh on the ground so far.

Chair 1 runs closed due to "a couple small avalanches." I didn't see any, nor do I see any signs of instability (though I do see a few poachers), but I take their word for it.

Down to the bottom of 2 twice while I wait for 3 to open. This didn't suck. What did suck were the gale force winds coming up 2. Chairs hitting the towers. Scary.

Wait at the bottom of 3 while they get ready to open, then we hear the call- we're shutting down, folks. As bummed as I am with all the great snow and terrain all around us, this is unfortunately the right call. The lifts just aren't safe. WHY oh WHY does the one day I have to ride in the middle of the return of winter have to be the single unrideable day? Ahhhhhhhrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhhhhh. So I get back on 2, and it of course gets stuck for 15 minutes while I'm suspended at the highest possible point, fully exposed to the elements. I'm glad I'm dressed for the occasion.

Downloading 1 is torture, both because of the wind and because of the wasted effort in getting up today. Grab a voucher from the window, ask for a second and get it. Sweet.

Best run of the day is from the ticket window to the parking lot.

Next day I can go is Feb 28.

I'm losing my mind here.

 

[socal]

Same experience as me. I got up there early, like 730 (not bad after drinking all day on Sunday), saw a few people coming down on my way up and it looked great. By the time I got up they had shut down the runs below 1 because of, like you said, "some small avalanches". After seeing the winds and hearing that chair 2 was hitting the towers I took 1 back down. On the way down I did see a cat buried, maybe by an avalanche? There was another cat there trying to dig it out. I was surprised when the woman at the ticket booth gave me 3 vouchers, some consolation.

 

[Tony Crocker]

Given the weather prediction for this storm I'm not surprised by this, nor by Angeles Crest Hwy being closed below Mt. Waterman. Should be more fresh tracks for tomorrow though.

 

[Aukai]

Should be more fresh tracks for tomorrow though.

WHY MUST YOU MOCK ME SO???

stupid work..... Shoulda gone to High or Summit today. Well, I guess that's much easier to say now that I'm on my couch and not out there dodging clowns on the highways.

I did see that cat coming down- it didn't even occur to me a little slide might have buried it given how littered Mt. Baldy is with buried vehicles of various shapes and sizes, but it does make sense thinking about how it looked.

 

[Tony Crocker]

WHY MUST YOU MOCK ME SO??? stupid work.

This is not Utah, where you could go through your whole vacation in a month or two if you skied every powder day.

Here's the grand total of days off work I've taken to ski Baldy:
2/12/1985, other reasons involved, not relevant to timing powder days
2/22/1990, not powder but first SoCal local day over 30K
3/21/1991 \/ \/ \/ ,the jackpot, powder all day with fog to keep the sun off and the crowds down, still rates in top 3 lifetime lift service anywhere
2/13/1992, during storm, not allowed to ski either chair 1 or 4, one reason I decided not to try today
2/9/1998, very good but quite crowded and some logistics issues with a mechanical problem on chair 2
2/25/1998, second day after storm because I thought they might not get much open the first day. But they did, so there was fresh powder only in South Bowl and sidecountry.
5/14/1998, I'll be lucky to ever see powder at Baldy in May again. Needless to say the sun got it everywhere by noon.
2/14/2001, 7 feet new, lifts opened 11AM, I've mentioned this one on FTO a few times.
12/30/2004, Thunder did not get de-iced until almost the end of the day, so I got a half-price voucher, used 2 days later to score powder from the next storm. Snow 12/30 was good but obviously the lines on chair 1 were huge.
12/18/2008, first big storm this season

So if I go tomorrow that will get the average over 20 seasons up to one Baldy vacation day off work every 2 years.

 

[ski-the-face]

On the way down i did see a cat buried

:lol: What? Poor kitten. So now they have cats a mt baldy.

 

[K2VLAD]

CAN YOU DIG IT??

 

[Ryno]

on the somewhat bright side, and in a rather unbaldy-like move, they were giving free tickets away. will be back up friday for another shot.

 

[socal]

I'm somewhat skeptical of the conditions for today (hope someone proves me wrong). I'm not thinking it'll be "epic" as it should have been. The wind had blown most of the snow off the runs off chair 1 that were visible from the lift. Not sure what that means for Chair 3, but things didn't look great below chair 1. Also, if they really did get 18+ inches, with all that wind and a 3-5ft snowpack I've gotta think there's some real avalanche danger.

Here are a few pics I got from the morning.

The snow level on Monday morning was really low. This was taken just a few minutes past the 2 tunnels:

Things didn't seem too bad when I got to the parking lot. Winds were almost non existent:

Even the lift ride up wasn't too bad (until about 3/4 of the way up):

At the notch, things were bad. I'd say 30-40 mph sustained winds with much stronger gusts:

Here's a pic of the buried cat (smaller one):

Here's 2 pics where I tried to get a shot of how much snow the wind had blown off:

The only way I could get the camera to focus was to zoom in on something with some contrast. This rocky area was completely scoured by the winds.

Just for fun, here was what part of my ride down the lift looked like:

 

[SoCal Rider]

Tony might think I'm nuts, but that's why I may go to Bear tomorrow. BB seems to be less affected by wind, although I haven't confirmed for this storm. I'd hate to get to Baldy tomorrow wondering where the reported 24"-30" went.

 

[Tony Crocker]

:evil: :evil: :evil:
I can give the preliminary report, that Baldy was likely worth the wait today. I arrived just before 8AM, still snowing steadily down to 3,500 feet. A lady came out of the trailer and said half an hour before ticket sales, 1.5 to 2 hours until skiing. So I found Adam already in line and waited a bit. About 8:45 an employee came out of the ticket office and said Chair 1 had just started moving to send the first employees up the hill, that it would open for skiing in an hour or two but that Thunder would be probably not get running until 4PM. So I decided to bail, a few things I need to catch up on, plus I could get to work by noon. The ticket window was still not open when I left.

I can report that it snowed the whole time I was there. There is plenty of new snow down by the ticket office and it appeared to be of good quality.

A follow-up call has determined that Thunder opened at 11AM #-o #-o #-o . Moral: be careful believing anything a Mt. Baldy employee tells you. An estimate of when something will open can be off by half a day or more - in either direction. I've been playing this cat-and-mouse game for 20 years and I still don't get it right some of the time. :evil: :evil: :evil:

 

[SoCal Rider]

Wednesday will probably be fine, but that is one of the reasons I'm gun-shy about Baldy midweek after a storm. I almost always have to be home (north San Diego Co.) by 4:30-5 sharp. I'm used to 4-5 hours in the car and 4-5 hours of riding, but those shenanigans could have screwed me. (Interestingly enough, today is a day where I would have had childcare covered until 8, but I couldn't get the day off.)