Day 11: Alpine Meadows

The first storm of the week long set came in on Sunday night, and by morning there was 7″-9″ at Alpine Meadows. Everyone else in the house (Matt, Allyson, Reagan, Chico, Michelle, and Josh) took off back to the city to try and beat the intense part of the store, while Andy, Che, Carolina and I made our way over to the resort and got there around 10:30am after a stop at Gear and Grind. We started out on Summit Six  and while the conditions were not too bad, it was pretty limited in terms of visibility, and with the snow dumping we only did one run from the top – after that it was all Roundhouse -> Yellow Chair -> Scott Chair -> Promised Land laps. Javier arrived late, and we met up with him at the base of Scott, and then stuck together for some really good riding once the tracks had filled in and traffic had cleared out. It was a nice feeling to be some of the better riders on the mountain, and we really charged it for a while – trees, cornices, anything we could find. They closed down Scott around 1:30 for wind (right after we found some pretty epic untracked powder in the trees off to the side of Scott Chute, and by 2:00 pretty much everything had been shut down.

While there were some pretty strong gusts, the closures were likely due to the whiteout conditions as much as anything else. At times you could only see about 20 ft it was coming down so hard, and combined with snow caked goggles it was basically impossible to see. We ended up back at the lodge for a beer before finding a foot of snow on the car (and nearly a quarter inch inside the car while we took off our gear) before heading back to the house to wait on the rest of the dump we should get tonight.