Alpine Meadows 5-21:
Went out skiing with work friends, ran into
@SpeedyKevin and a crew while there.
Key observation: Skied a LOT better than it looked. Despite the very hot weather.
Started the morning on Sherwood- from 8:30 to 10 it skied quite well, and after seeing a few folks hitting the sun cups on South Face (the slightly less south facing pieces of it
decided to copy, accessing via traverse as the upward hiking road from Sherwood lift was very soft and spongy. It skied fantastic. Not corn- something else- but smooth, not grabby, not rutty. Maybe not as springy as corn, but real nice. Kind of like late season Smoothie in the other valley, which we really didn't get this year.
When Sherwood shut down we exited via Our Father (fantastic, though tricky for the hooligan boarder in my crew) and ran into our Skitlalk friends. Then moved to Summit.
Based on Our Father being good we started hitting Palisades, lower Keyhole, etc. Then shifted over to the Ds and Peril Ridge trees, also being very good. About that time the groomer exits started getting nasty grabby so we tried to decend via Sympathy Face, etc.
After eating too much at the Bavarian, shifted to Scott, where I have to say it's REAL good, but access is fading fast with key linkages getting burned out, so get it while you can. One great exception was Gentian- easy to get into via the usual way- still a ton of snow on top of the ridge there, though the area around the lift itself is burning out- and the trees skied awesome as did the Promised Land area late in the day we took for exit. Generally went down a little lower and traversed skier's left back into Promised Land as to avoid hiking at the bottom. It looked rotten - but was good. However, again, the snowboarder in our group was unhappy with the narrow single track between some monster tree wells so YMMV.
Got a little tired so ended the day with two laps of Chute that Seldom which also skied great.
Apart from groomed areas getting grabby late in a very hot day, the coverage and snow conditions were shockingly good. I really can't explain why. No overnight freeze. Perhaps the very deep snowpack is having kind of a glacier effect. As well as sensibly closing Sherwood before it gets rutty. But whatever. Great. Get out there!
Also skied Palisades on Saturday, which was good, but well covered elsewhere in the thread above.
