Palisades Tahoe, CA Operations Update For Sunday, December 11, 2022

Written by Palisades Tahoe at 4:03pm PT on December 10, 2022

Visibility was LOW today — Just take a look at the above image. That’s High Camp, believe it or not, at the top of Bailey’s Beach, captured by Palisades Grooming Manager Craig Patterson. Before 6 o clock this morning, wind gusts on our upper mountains had already hit 100 miles per hour. As we write this blog, we have recorded gusts at Alpine of 165 miles per hour. Needless to say: it was windy out there! Before we talk about tomorrow’s expectations, let’s recap what went down at each mountain today.

RECAP: DECEMBER 10TH AT PALISADES

We only saw about an inch of natural snow overnight at Palisades, but we did make snow on the lower mountain. Around 6am, Palisades Mountain Manager Jimmy King let the team know that he believed upper mountain would be a no-go, and he listed KT-22 as questionable. Our lift maintenance team was out there in the elements and between 7 and 8 am, they assessed all lower mountain lifts for viability in the current conditions. By 8:20am, we pulled the Aerial Tram, Bailey’s Beach, Gold Coast, Mountain Meadow, Shirley Lake, Siberia, and Solitude off the schedule for the day. Minutes later, we made the call to pull Wa She Shu and Olympic Lady as well. Just before 9am, we, unfortunately, had to pull KT-22 from the schedule, too. The day’s conditions were just too extreme.

Resort Chair, Exhibition, First Ventures, and the carpets opened at 9am as planned. Roughly 45 minutes later, both Resort Chair and Exhibition were placed on a lightning hold. This is somewhat rare for wintertime and certainly wasn’t expected today. Lightning Holds are required whenever a lightning strike is detected within a 30-mile radius of the resort. There are several factors here, like which direction the cell is moving and how many strikes have occurred. Today there was just one random strike, so we were able to reopen the lifts within 30 minutes. After 2pm, the rate of snowfall increased significantly, so we had to close Resort Chair and Exhibition early at 3pm, followed quickly by any remaining beginner terrain.

RECAP: DECEMBER 10TH AT ALPINE

Overnight, Alpine received just an inch of natural snow, and their overnight snowmaking efforts were focused on Roundhouse. At 7:30am, we placed Summit chair on a wind hold, and by 8am, we made the call to pull it from the schedule entirely. Roundhouse went on wind hold at 7:45am, followed by Yellow at 8am. At 9am, Treeline Cirque, Meadow, and Subway opened as planned. By 11:35am, Treeline Cirque had been placed on a wind hold as well. At 12:20pm, Roundhouse and Yellow were removed from the schedule for the day. Meadow then went on wind hold at 1:30pm, and was removed from the schedule along with Treeline Cirque at 2:15pm. After 3:30, we closed Alpine Meadows Road to perform avalanche mitigation.

WEATHER OUTLOOK

OpenSnow is now calling for the potential totals of 55 inches from now until midnight on Sunday. Sunday itself could see between 7 and 13 inches of snow, a slight downgrade from the original 18 or so inches we were expecting. Bryan Allegretto, who writes our Weather Blog, predicted this morning that we’ll have 2-3 feet of snow in the base areas and 3-5 feet of snow on the upper mountains by Monday. It is very snowy out there right now, and the winds are also sure to have an impact: some places will have huge stashes of snow created by wind buffs, while spots like our ridgelines could be stripped from the constant gale.