Mt. Baldy, CA $150 unrestricted pass

That reference page was quite a laugh. Has anyone ever been delusional enough to pay $799 for a Baldy season pass? Even the $299 current price on that page is higher than the recent years I know about. $149 is more in the ballpark, but based upon recent history I would not do it.

Baldy has not been worth skiing at all any time in 6 of the past 8 seasons. During those years it has never been more than 1/4 open (that means the beginner area and a couple of manmade groomers on Thunder). Four of those years Baldy was either never open at all or maybe a few weeks with only the beginner chair 2. The other two seasons, 2010-11 and 2016-17, had perhaps two months of being at least half open but only a week or two of full operation.

The seasons where a Baldy season pass would have been worthwhile are those in green or blue on this chart: http://www.bestsnow.net/scalhist.htm
That's about 30% but as I've noted the last one was 2009-10.

Historically a strong El Nino raises those odds from 30% to 60% so accordingly I bought $169 passes for 2015-16. That did not work out so well: Here's the TR from the day I went out there to pick up the passes: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=12036
 
I gave up on Baldy years ago. Seems either they have a rocky year, or the week of good conditions happens to coincide with a trip to SLC or elsewhere. Perhaps Baldy may be a casualty of global warming?
Maybe I should change my username and avitar on this board...
 
baldyskier":3auxhmkz said:
the week of good conditions happens to coincide with a trip to SLC or elsewhere. Perhaps Baldy may be a casualty of global warming?
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Baldy's only week of full operation in winter conditions since 2011 was the last week of January 2017 when we were in Austria. Given our trips to the Alps, Canada and my Snowbird timeshare, that odds are probably in the 50% range that we will not be in SoCal when Baldy has good skiing.

We discussed the SoCal climate trend in the other thread: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=12036&p=75536#p75536

Temperature graph from there:
lacvannt.gif


L.A. rainfall graph:
LACVPRCP.gif

The main reason the past 8 seasons have been so bad is drought, which is a recurring fact of life in SoCal. Note 1945-1964 in the graph.

The more worrisome recent development is rain vs. snow in the SoCal ski areas. I've crudely estimated this since I started skiing in 1976 and the average is about 4 days of rain during ski season. For the past 8 seasons that average is 6 days, which is even worse that it looks considering most of these were drier than normal years. One of the wet seasons, 2016-17, had 13 days of rain, blowing away the prior record of 9 days in 1996-97. The other wet season, 2010-11, had half of L.A.'s rainfall in December but that included 5 days of rain instead of snow in the ski areas.

With SoCal weather volatility the above could easily be random variation. The equally warm years in the 1980's and 1990's did not have disproportionate rain in the SoCal ski areas.
 
Yep, Baldy is amazing when they have a lot of snow... Was it back in 2004/5, when they got close to 300"? Some of my best days anywhere were that year at Baldy.

As I've said before (along with a few others), the fringe areas are toast with the overall climate warming.
 
snowave":1vifpei9 said:
Was it back in 2004/5, when they got close to 300"?
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Yes, that was the year Garry Klassen (lives 20 minutes from Baldy) had 86 ski days. In 1982-83 and 1997-98 I think Baldy got close to 350".

snowave":1vifpei9 said:
As I've said before (along with a few others), the fringe areas are toast with the overall climate warming.
Click to expand...
We saw no deterioration in SoCal skiing during the sustained warm years in the 1980's and 1990's.

So the question is what's different during the past 8 years?
1) I have identified higher proportion of rain vs. snow. Whether that's random or some real change from 20 years ago with the same L.A. temps I have no idea.
2) Annual temps don't tell the whole story. Maybe the winters are warmer now and the summers were warmer in the 1980's and 1990's. During the 2013-14 and 2017-18 seasons The Big Bear areas never got past half open with advanced runs like Wall/Olympic and Geronimo never opening. Only in 1983-84, the record low snowfall season with only 12 inches, was Snow Summit skiing as limited as in those 2 recent years since it installed the pipe into the lake for big time snowmaking capacity in 1979. So not only were 2013-14 and 2017-18 dry, they were also so warm as to limit snowmaking opportunities. Cold spells after New Years' in both seasons were so infrequent that they had to be used to restore surfaces on existing open runs rather than expand open terrain.

California precipitation is among the most volatile in the world. Therefore it will take a long time to become confident that deviations are not random. That's why rain vs. snow is the climate trend aspect to which I and other skiers should pay the most attention. As a region with erratic and not that high precipitation, a meaningful increase in rain vs. snow could make much of SoCal a "fringe" ski region.

Big Bear's percents of terrain open have an average over these past 8 years similar to the long term average during early and mid season with a decline only for late season past mid-March. Snowmaking effectiveness in December/January is still reliable overall. So I think Big Bear's future is fairly secure for the intermediate term.
 
All I can say is Im glad my prime skiing years were when Baldy was at its best...Had some incredible skiing days with the most awesome steep terrain and spring skiing that lasted until late April and May sometimes..What really concerns me is comparing so cal rain with mammoth snowfalls..Back in 68 69 when Mammoth had its record breaking snowfall, The San Gabriel's had record amounts of rain with major flooding .., But the winter of 2016 / 2017 when Mammoth had another record breaking snowfall year, So cal had a mediocre rain fall with Baldy getting maybe 1 or 2 decent storms but nothing like the huge dumper storms we had in the past. So Cal should of had a huge winter during the record snowfall in the sierras but was denied...That makes me think Baldy is now becoming a summer resort instead of a winter resort...Lets hope the cycle changes and So Cal gets drenched for the next 10 years..
 
Mammoth's monthly snowfall is 74% correlated with L.A.'s rain and 79% correlated with S.F.'s rain.

L.A. rain in 2016-17 was 18.92 inches, 127% of average and not far short of the 19.67 inches in 1978-79, the qualitatively best SoCal season in my experience.Why was 1978-79 so good? It started with 3 feet in mid-November and there were no sustained dry spells before April. It was also abnormally cold. Big Bear Lake froze solid and there was only one rain day in mid-January, which was just a blip with the 99 inches of snow that month.

By contrast 2016-17 had by far the most rain days (13) in the SoCal ski areas. It did snow 92 inches in January, but it rained 4x in early February so conditions were quickly degraded. So yes there were some big storms in 2016-17 but many of them were rain not snow in the SoCal ski areas.

Also of note was 2004-05, which at 37.25 inches was the second rainiest in L.A. going back to 1878. It was a very good SoCal ski season but one of the biggest storms in January 2005 rained 10+ inches to the top of Baldy. Two storms totaling 82 inches opened Mammoth in October. The second storm opened SoCal too viewtopic.php?t=124 but the first and larger one was all rain in the SoCal mountains.

There have been some other wet L.A. winters where the skiing was poor due to excessive rain in the ski areas, notably 1985-86 and 1996-97.
 
The MEI index https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/table.html moved quite a bit from -.432 in MAR/APR to +.465 in APR/MAY.

Both of these numbers are at the mild level at which effect upon weather is highly speculative. Moderate La Ninas seem to have some impact. El Nino effects are less consistent and need to be much stronger than the current level to have an effect. 2015-16 was strong and still didn't validate all that well. http://bestsnow.net/ElNino16.htm

If the MEI is very high in the autumn (meaning 1982/1997/2015 high) I supposed I might take a flyer on those cheap Baldy passes again.
 
I sure miss the Mt Baldy trip reports. It's a joy reading about the dump that is Mt. Baldy. I sort of miss skiing there...
 
Sure sometimes it ain't so good but a trip report is the opposite of telling everybody to just stay home. You and I who don't post them come off as couch potatoes. You could lose a few pounds, kook....
 
egieszl":1ap8kt4e said:
I sure miss the Mt Baldy trip reports. It's a joy reading about the dump that is Mt. Baldy. I sort of miss skiing there...
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You're thinking of the good old days when the dump got dumps. Baldy without a lot of fresh snow is a waste of time and P-tex.
 
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