Industry News
Palisades Tahoe, CA, known for some of the most extreme inbounds terrain in the country, has just reclassified a number of runs and introduced a double-black diamond rating, reports Peak Rankings.
- Related: Big Sky Resort, MT Introduces TRIPLE Black Diamond Trails to Denote ‘High Consequence Terrain’
The 22/23 trail map available on the Palisades Tahoe app shows a number of runs on the Palisades side with the upgraded rating (the trail map on the website still shows last year’s map). McConkey’s, Sherwood Cliffs, Our Father, Keyhole Slopes, Idiot’s Delight, Beaver Bowl, Tamara’s, and Scott Chute are just a few runs now labelled as double-black diamonds.
It is the first time the Palisades side, formerly known as Squaw Valley, has had a double black diamond rating. Alpine Meadows previously had double black diamonds before the merger of the two resorts in 2012 explains Peak Rankings.
Palisades Tahoe opened for the season on Friday November 18th and the base to base gondola is expected to open mid-December.
There is no consistent classification scheme for trail difficulties to make runs comparable across resorts. Ski runs are graded based on the difficulty of the terrain at each specific resort.
But did “Palisades” ask the runs if they even identified as double black diamonds before just putting their outdated, insensitive labels on them?
“boasted of having” ? Correction, they have extreme terrain. Period.
That said, if someone isn’t smart enough to know that The Chimney isn’t just a regular black diamond when they look over the edge, then they deserve what they get.
It’s about time – Palisades boasted of having such extreme terrain yet they never had double-black diamond runs, so one could easily be misled into thinking “oh – it’s just a normal black diamond run” then get in over your head.