2010 Ski Season: Day 21-Alpine Meadows

Location: Alpine Meadows
Conditions: Soft Snow, Spring, Bluebird
Date: 4/7/2010

Alpine Meadows remains one of my favorite resorts. Skiing solo on a mid-week trip, I was determined to rack up some serious vertical footage. I hit the backside all morning and came back down the Expert Shortcut, one of my favorite runs there. The run of the day was through Pallisades. Great snow, great moguls, nice and steep, and all to myself.

Here's the stats for the day and the map:

26617 vertical feet
52 miles


View Track 15 in a larger map

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2010 Ski Season: Day 17-Alpine

Location: Alpine Meadows
Date: 3/13/2010
Conditions: Variable

Jodi and I took the Summit Six lift and traversed/hiked along the high traverse to Sun Bowl. While the cornice getting into the bowl was a bit dicey for one of us, the skiing was fantastic.

That night, we headed to our favorite bankrupt casino straddling the California/Nevada border and rested up for Day 2 on the overnight Bay Area Ski Bus trip.

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2009 Ski Season: Day 17

Hi From Lake Tahoe
Originally uploaded by dmourati

Location: Alpine Meadows
Date: 3/7/2009
Conditions: Groomed, powder, soft

The day started off on a sour note when our Bay Area Ski Bus host was late to arrive in Santa Clara. We waited for her for 20 minutes then finally took off only to make 4 more stops on the trip to Tahoe City.

Stop 1: pick up more folks in San Francisco

Stop 2: pick up more folks in Oakland plus our missing host

Stop 3: pick up more folks in Walnut Creek

Stop 4: pick up lift tickets in Truckee

Finally, we made it to Alpine Meadows about 9:30 AM.

I was on promo duty so I helped my main man Tom carry what seemed like a 100 pound plus tent through the parking lot and up to the base of the mountain. Ordinarily, it would not have been a big deal but in ski boots, walking across a parking lot, carrying skis, poles, and a 100 pound tent is not the best way to start out the day. After finally erecting this monster, I was anxious to get in a milk run. Tom and i hit Hot Wheels and I went into the gully in search of pow.

I found it. I ripped my way down the gully and back to the Hot Wheels lift where we met Jodi for another lap on Hot Wheels.

We headed to the backside and took a few runs off Lakeview Chair. As the chair's name implies, it offers some of the best scenery the mountain has to offer. See above.

I had an awesome wipeout off of Sherwood Express. I was mach schnell down a groomer when I spotted some fresh powpow off to the side. I went into the powder field without slowing down. My skis started to grip the snow but I was not able to make any proper turns. When I came to a slight embankment, I knew it was trouble. My left ski dug into the snow and popped off. I kept going full speed ahead. Yardsale. It was fun though. Back at the bottom, Jodi knocked a huge clump of snow off my helmet, a dead-giveaway that an accident had occurred on my last run.

We hit the Alpine Bowl later that afternoon which showed evidence of avalanche debris in the form of huge snow boulders. Roundhouse provided the rest of the afternoons fun and we wound down around 4:00 PM after a full day of skiing.

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2009 Ski Season: Day 12

Location: Alpine Meadows
Conditions: Epic Powder, 28" overnight, 6" more during the day
Dat: 2/14/2009

Saturday marked the Bay Area Ski Bus's first trip to Alpine Meadows for the 2009 season. The conditions were epic: a whopping 29" of snow in the morning report, and another 6" during the day on top a huge storm total for the week. We were waist deep in powder by the first run.

Early that morning word came that legendary ski filmmaker Warren Miller was filming at Alpine. You know you're skiing the place to be when Warren Miller shows up! Also in the house were Jonny Moseley, Erol Kerr, and other Tahoe locals.

We hit Hot Wheels Gully for some fresh and went to the backside for some more.



What a day! Definitely the most snow I've skied at Tahoe and the most ever since Alaska.

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2008 Ski Season Day 13

Location: Alpine Meadows
Conditions: 3" powder and morning snowfall



Alpine is a great mountain. First chair up Roundhouse we went up with a local. He asked if we skied there a lot and told him it was our first time. This guy took me on a morning powder first run. Pretty sweet, he even let me get first tracks on a few runs.

Then, we took Scott's Chair to the Promised Land and into Gentian Gully past Butch Block Rock. Very cool. We had to traverse out of there to get back to catch a lift.

By the end of the day, we were ready to deal with Scott's Chute.

Conditions were soft and there were a few people skiing it by then so we went for it.

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