Snow falls, hope rises at mountain resorts
When the first snowflakes started falling this month at Lake Tahoe, people were so ecstatic that I saw grown men and women run around, looking up, and then try to catch their first snowflake of the season in their mouths.
Snowflakes rarely have tasted so sweet.
Of 21 Tahoe ski areas in California and Nevada, eight are open, six have set opening dates, and the rest are likely to open by mid-December or earlier.
Elsewhere, the scene at Mammoth Mountain, perched at Minaret Summit in the Eastern Sierra, is symbolic of the hope that has emerged this month for ski areas across California
and Nevada. Mammoth, which often gets a jump on the other resorts, already has a 42-inch base, and it is operating seven lifts with access to 58 of its 150 runs.
It’s just a start, and it’s only mid-November, with the Thanksgiving holiday a week away.
Boding well for winter
A series of three storms this month swept through the high Sierra, bringing as much as 4 feet of snow to the Sierra crest. At elevations from 6,600 to 9,000 feet near Lake Tahoe, there is roughly 6 to 30 inches on the ground, depending where you look.
Even at lake level in Tahoe, though the roads were dry and clear Wednesday, there was a coat of white velvet alongside. Last winter it was bare dirt well into January.
In addition, cold nights have snow-making operations running big-time at most resorts. It was 18 degrees at Truckee, for instance, at 9 a.m. Tuesday. Many ski areas can make huge piles of snow overnight, which are then spread over specified runs, often equivalent to snowfall of 5 to 10 inches.
The early-season conditions look like a forerunner to the ski season, which, in good years, cranks up during the Christmas holidays and then runs at peak through Presidents Day in February and into early March.
Everything looks on track. On Interstate 80, the approach to Donner Summit (7,227 feet, eastbound) looks like classic early winter. The roads are clear, with building snow alongside as you rise up the Sierra.
The first patches appear at about 4,000 feet, and then by 5,000 feet, there is a coating of white along the road at the Whitmore Grade near Blue Canyon. That continues and builds past Yuba Gap, Castle Peak and Soda Springs at Donner Summit. As you enter the banana belt east of Truckee, the snow then becomes sparse, typical for November.
Stark contrast so far
This is wildly different than last winter. At peak winter, in mid-January, there was no snow along this approach, from Whitmore Grade/Blue Canyon to Donner Summit.
Even at the major ski areas, there was often no snow at the base staging areas. You had to take lifts to reach snow higher on the mountains.
In addition, ski areas with little or no snow-making capacity at lower elevation are getting ready to crank up for winter, too. Last winter, high snow levels made for a bleak winter at Badger Pass in Yosemite National Park and others.
Badger received 10 inches of snow in the past week and is scheduled to open Dec. 11, said Sean Costello in Yosemite. A check Wednesday showed that some runs are already groomed as crews work out the machinery for the first time.
The anticipation that comes with a good start to winter in the Sierra is tempered, of course, by the reality of early-season conditions. Snowfall is never even, and in some micro-climates, you can get 4 feet of snow in one spot and nothing two miles away. That means some runs can have bare spots, or worse, visible rocks. That’s pretty standard for mid-November.
For the ski areas that are open, snow-making in the next week will help cover thin spots for the Thanksgiving holiday.
In the meantime, no storms are forecast for the Sierra Nevada until the first weekend of December.
At Tahoe, what you feel is an underlying sense of excitement that comes with anticipation of something good ahead. You see and hear advertising for lift ticket packages, people getting gear ready, maybe buying new gloves or thermals.
Or, best of all: adults running around and trying to catch their first snowflake of the season in their mouths.