Two years ago Mt. Baldy had a lot of snow when we were in the Alps, but it rained 4x during the first 10 days of February when we got back. This year our timing was better. SoCal had a very wet January, but not so great in the local ski areas. During the week we left for the Alps it snowed over a foot but then rained for two days. The most recent storms fortunately worked the other way around. After raining last Thursday, Friday and Saturday it snowed 35 inches at Mt. Baldy Sunday and Monday.
Baldy seems more informative this season about conditions. The weekend storm was very violent in terms of wind, so they announced they would not open Tuesday as the storm was winding down. They also described the snow as not powder but windpacked, warning that some areas would be thin and others drifted 5-6 feet deep. I viewed this as a positive, because SoCal powder may be good on opening day, but it can then set up and make ungroomed skiing very difficult for a couple of weeks. The packed snow will continue to ski well, and if it warms up it will transition to corn faster than churned powder will.
On Tuesday at 8PM Baldy posted that they were targeting opening chair 1 at 9AM and Thunder at 10AM. Past experience tells me to take such predictions with a grain of salt, but Liz and I got there just after 8AM Wednesday to beat any traffic or road screwups. Only the hairpins above Baldy village required careful driving, and by the standards of past first days after a storm, the crowd was fairly light, eventually filling only two levels of the parking lot. We were in the upper lot, less than 100 feet from the ticket office.
We were pleased to see chair 1 load starting at 9:20AM. Baldy had warned that cover became thinner the lower down chair 1 you skied, so I considered this first view up Bentley's to be a plus in that context.
Farther up is the view of direct south facing Holcumac, which I did not ski until the next day when chair 4 opened.
Baldy is nearly always windy during storms, but this one set a new standard for the level of resulting rime.
The trees are caked in all directions and the restaurant at the Notch is coated in rime too.
Liz went into the Notch to thaw out while I scouted the Chair 1 terrain. It was 24F when we arrived, and in early morning you are in continuous shade until you arrive at the Notch, which also had some wind for the latter part of the chair ride. Highs were about 30, which was good for keeping nearly all the snow in winter mode Wednesday.
The view of Nightmare looked good from chair 1 so that's where I headed first. This is where I first encountered the hard surface in wind exposed areas, particularly with some west exposure. The traverse line from the top of chair 1 had lots of whoop-de-dos and slick patches, so for future runs on chair 1 I opted to take the fire road starting behind the equipment building. The traverse entry into Nightmare was also firm with some rock exposure, so I was glad I didn't bring Liz with me. Once into Nightmare it was soft windpacked powder that skied beautifully. View of the first tracks in there, one of which is mine, on the second chair ride.
I had a about a 10 minute wait for that second chair as people were still arriving at the mountain.
Taking that fire road from the equipment building, I passed under chair 2 with closed Thunder in the background.
If you zoom closer, between the two chair 2 cables you can see two guys on top of the lower Thunder tower chipping the rime off.
I skied Bentley's next. It had a cleaner entry than Nightmare but I needed to zigzag back a forth some to stay in the best snow. I figured Liz could get down Bentley's at the end of the day but for now she should wait for Thunder, where opening time was delayed first to 11AM, then noon.
After my second run on chair 1, the liftline of arriving people had cleared. For my third run I entered at Bentley's but traversed right hoping to get a clean line in the Morgan's Grove trees. But those had a slight west tilt and I kept running into the hard patches. Eventually the traverse ended up about a quarter of the way down Nightmare so I skied that again.
I went into the Notch, had a bowl of soup with Liz, then we both came out just after noon and skied down to Thunder, where the chair was at least moving though not loading yet. Soon one of the patrollers told us that a cable had started to derail, so they had to stop and reset it.
Thunder finally started loading at 1:23PM. We were about 50 people back, and partway up we see the first tracks being made.
Looking back at the view toward 10,000 foot Baldy peak, note that the chairs' electrical cable is coated with neatly a foot diameter of rime.
From Thunder you can easily see to the ocean and Catalina on a clear day, and this time the view is further clarified by sun reflection illuminating ships in the water.
The 8,600 feet is I'm fairly sure the largest vertical view from a lift in North America. The only place I know I've seen more is from the Aiguille de Midi in Chamonix. I don't recall specifically, but you can probably see west from La Parva down into Santiago.
Liz on top of Thunder with rimed trees, Baldy Peak in background:
At last it was time to put away the camera and ski Thunder. I skied first Skyline, then Emile's, then the trees between them. It was easy to tell riding Thunder and listening to people's turns that these had the best snow. Liftline was adequately covered but it had more wind exposure and was mostly hardpack. The trees between Liftline and Robin's are tilted north and had excellent snow. Robin's itself had hard snow at the bottom and a narrow spot where a tree had fallen but was cleared the next day.
Goldridge was good too. I skied that twice plus encores on the Emile's trees and Robin's trees before Thunder closed at 4PM. We skied Bentley's to the bottom, lower section illuminated here in the late afternoon sun.
I skied 14,300 vertical, maybe half that in shallow but very smooth powder. Liz only skied about half as much but she was delighted to see "the real Baldy" that I've been telling her about for many years.
I returned to Mt. Baldy Thursday, though Liz had an appointment and didn't come with me. Thunder would be open all day and hopefully chair 4 would open sometime.
Again I arrived at 8AM, but to an even smaller crowd and I loaded Thunder before 9AM. By midday there were again two rows of parking filled, but people didn't come quite as early as on Wednesday.
Most trees in the Notch area were caked with rime all over from variable winds, but on the south side of Thunder the wind coming up Icehouse Canyon was more consistent.
Thus the rime is elongated two feet on the windward side of this pole.
I was a bit worked over from the prior day, so with a nearly empty mountain I warmed up on cruisers Fire Road/Bonanza and Shortcut/Robin's. Next was Emile's, which remained is as good shape as the end of the prior day. I skied halfway down Skyline and ventured into Tube.
Snow was packed powder but not quite as smooth or consistent as the other tree sectors I had skied on Thunder. I also skied the trees between Goldridge and Bonanza. These are tighter trees with a less direct fall line but snow stays very soft in there.
What I did not get to ski was South Bowl.
Just left of center into the trees a patroller was digging a pit. The open area in front of the trees was entirely hardpacked. When it opens, it will be best traversing out the ridgeline and dropping into the trees when the slope bends to face more north.
I tested Herb's and Andy's, which drop off Fire Road into Robin's. These face west and a bit south and the upper parts of both were pretty bad in terms of both hard snow and obstacles to avoid. So I finished up my 10 runs on Thunder in the places I knew were good like Robin's trees and Emile's trees. I needed a break and went in for a bowl of chili about 11:30.
Coming out of lunch I could see a couple of lifties at the base of chair 4, but it wasn't moving so I decided to ski to the bottom. I went for Nightmare and nearly had one. The entry had been scraped worse, I couldn't hold an edge on it, slipped with a hard hip check on the ice and perhaps rock but fortunately got my lower ski back on enough edge to steer into a pitch of softer snow where I could stop. I continued the traverse into Nightmare, where the snow surface had tightened up vs. Wednesday. There was no melt freeze but it was firm chalk, and there's no question I would have slid a long way if I had not arrested that fall. Nightmare is 36 degrees average for 700 vertical.
Returning to the Notch, I saw a few people lined up at chair 4 and patrol said 20 minutes, but the lift was not moving so I headed for Thunder. This was not a great decision, as Thunder came to a halt at 1PM while I was on the third chair from the top unloading, about the same time chair 4 opened. After 10 minutes, Thunder started moving, but very slowly. From my position I was off Thunder soon and skied Mullin's Mile to reach chair 4 directly.
From the top of chair 4 here's the view of Thunder.
From here you can see San Gorgonio in the distance.
I skied Spring Ridge to test the snow at the same due south aspect as Holcumac would be lower down. The snow was cream cheese, good as long as you didn't hit someone's else's tracks. But it was thin, as there was surely no base over here before the recent storm. View of tracks near chair 4:
After my third chair ride I ventured to Holcumac. There's a very short window of skiability after a storm as it's relatively steep and south facing. When chair 4 doesn't open until the second day, it can already be melt/frozen from the first day. But fortunately Wednesday was cold. Thursday was only slightly warmer, but all the south facing on chair 4 was softening, so in the immediate future the best skiing over there will be on the groomers Roller Coaster an Turkey Shoot.
From the top of Holcumac, there's a panoramic view of all of the Thunder terrain from Bonanza to South Bowl, so I've put a few labels above selected runs.
The ridge in the foreground runs from the Notch restaurant at left to the top of Nightmare at right.
The cream cheese snow was wide open and barely tracked.
I skied a couple more turns then traversed over to the other tracks at center right to have a better shot at a clean exit at the bottom. I made it to the lower fire road, which I could take to Sugarpine under chair 1.
Looking back up:
Midday the canyon under the lower chair can get quite warm in the sun. The rimed trees were starting to melt, dropping death cookies that often rolled down the hill into Sugarpine. Riding back up, on many of the trees the rime that remained was forming foot long icicles (need to zoom to see clearly).
Driving out later below the parking lot the rime/snow was melting out of trees almost continuously. Thunder is still colder and more sheltered but when it gets warmer it will happen there too.
I skied back down Bentley's around 3PM and called it a day with 18,300 vertical. Bentley's was a bit firmer than Wednesday but not as much of a change in surface as Nightmare.
These are the best conditions I've skied Baldy since I retired 8 1/2 years ago. But we are not quite yet at the standards of good seasons in the past. Those would be the years in blue or green on this chart, 11 of them between 1978 and 2010. http://bestsnow.net/scalhist.htm
Why is that? Chair 4 is thin, won't survive more than a couple of weeks of warm weather. Chair 1 has OK coverage but still a lot of hard snow and DFU situations like I encountered at the top of Nightmare. Bentley's is already the only route to the bottom both enjoyable and fairly safe (upper half of Sugarpine is all hardpack), and Bentley's has choke points near the bottom that will get worse with warm weather.
Thunder has good coverage and preservation, should have good skiing through mid to late March with normal SoCal weather. But for now that's really about 3/4 of Thunder when you consider the hard snow on the more direct west exposures.
And of course the wild card is the weather. This weekend's cold storm in the Sierra will barely skirt SoCal with a few inches at most. Next week there is speculation about an atmospheric river. One more dump like the one last Sunday/Monday would set up Baldy for a couple of months of close to full operation skiing and maybe get this season a green score on that chart. But atmospheric river storms tend to be on the warm side, and a big rain event will screw up this season just like the 4 days of early February rain put an end to the good late January skiing two seasons ago.
Just as a note, Mt. Waterman's skiing continues to suffer even relative to Mt. Baldy. Its road is still closed today Feb. 8 so it will not open this weekend Feb. 9-10. This is not a new problem. Waterman has often lost its best powder days due to its road not opening for a few days after a big storm. The track record of Baldy's road being cleared promptly after storms has been excellent since the 1990's.
I suggest SoCal weekend warriors make the effort to get out there this weekend. It has remained cold enough to preserve mostly packed powder, so this will be only the second "A" weekend of SoCal skiing on that chart since 2011.
Baldy seems more informative this season about conditions. The weekend storm was very violent in terms of wind, so they announced they would not open Tuesday as the storm was winding down. They also described the snow as not powder but windpacked, warning that some areas would be thin and others drifted 5-6 feet deep. I viewed this as a positive, because SoCal powder may be good on opening day, but it can then set up and make ungroomed skiing very difficult for a couple of weeks. The packed snow will continue to ski well, and if it warms up it will transition to corn faster than churned powder will.
On Tuesday at 8PM Baldy posted that they were targeting opening chair 1 at 9AM and Thunder at 10AM. Past experience tells me to take such predictions with a grain of salt, but Liz and I got there just after 8AM Wednesday to beat any traffic or road screwups. Only the hairpins above Baldy village required careful driving, and by the standards of past first days after a storm, the crowd was fairly light, eventually filling only two levels of the parking lot. We were in the upper lot, less than 100 feet from the ticket office.
We were pleased to see chair 1 load starting at 9:20AM. Baldy had warned that cover became thinner the lower down chair 1 you skied, so I considered this first view up Bentley's to be a plus in that context.
Farther up is the view of direct south facing Holcumac, which I did not ski until the next day when chair 4 opened.
Baldy is nearly always windy during storms, but this one set a new standard for the level of resulting rime.
The trees are caked in all directions and the restaurant at the Notch is coated in rime too.
Liz went into the Notch to thaw out while I scouted the Chair 1 terrain. It was 24F when we arrived, and in early morning you are in continuous shade until you arrive at the Notch, which also had some wind for the latter part of the chair ride. Highs were about 30, which was good for keeping nearly all the snow in winter mode Wednesday.
The view of Nightmare looked good from chair 1 so that's where I headed first. This is where I first encountered the hard surface in wind exposed areas, particularly with some west exposure. The traverse line from the top of chair 1 had lots of whoop-de-dos and slick patches, so for future runs on chair 1 I opted to take the fire road starting behind the equipment building. The traverse entry into Nightmare was also firm with some rock exposure, so I was glad I didn't bring Liz with me. Once into Nightmare it was soft windpacked powder that skied beautifully. View of the first tracks in there, one of which is mine, on the second chair ride.
I had a about a 10 minute wait for that second chair as people were still arriving at the mountain.
Taking that fire road from the equipment building, I passed under chair 2 with closed Thunder in the background.
If you zoom closer, between the two chair 2 cables you can see two guys on top of the lower Thunder tower chipping the rime off.
I skied Bentley's next. It had a cleaner entry than Nightmare but I needed to zigzag back a forth some to stay in the best snow. I figured Liz could get down Bentley's at the end of the day but for now she should wait for Thunder, where opening time was delayed first to 11AM, then noon.
After my second run on chair 1, the liftline of arriving people had cleared. For my third run I entered at Bentley's but traversed right hoping to get a clean line in the Morgan's Grove trees. But those had a slight west tilt and I kept running into the hard patches. Eventually the traverse ended up about a quarter of the way down Nightmare so I skied that again.
I went into the Notch, had a bowl of soup with Liz, then we both came out just after noon and skied down to Thunder, where the chair was at least moving though not loading yet. Soon one of the patrollers told us that a cable had started to derail, so they had to stop and reset it.
Thunder finally started loading at 1:23PM. We were about 50 people back, and partway up we see the first tracks being made.
Looking back at the view toward 10,000 foot Baldy peak, note that the chairs' electrical cable is coated with neatly a foot diameter of rime.
From Thunder you can easily see to the ocean and Catalina on a clear day, and this time the view is further clarified by sun reflection illuminating ships in the water.
The 8,600 feet is I'm fairly sure the largest vertical view from a lift in North America. The only place I know I've seen more is from the Aiguille de Midi in Chamonix. I don't recall specifically, but you can probably see west from La Parva down into Santiago.
Liz on top of Thunder with rimed trees, Baldy Peak in background:
At last it was time to put away the camera and ski Thunder. I skied first Skyline, then Emile's, then the trees between them. It was easy to tell riding Thunder and listening to people's turns that these had the best snow. Liftline was adequately covered but it had more wind exposure and was mostly hardpack. The trees between Liftline and Robin's are tilted north and had excellent snow. Robin's itself had hard snow at the bottom and a narrow spot where a tree had fallen but was cleared the next day.
Goldridge was good too. I skied that twice plus encores on the Emile's trees and Robin's trees before Thunder closed at 4PM. We skied Bentley's to the bottom, lower section illuminated here in the late afternoon sun.
I skied 14,300 vertical, maybe half that in shallow but very smooth powder. Liz only skied about half as much but she was delighted to see "the real Baldy" that I've been telling her about for many years.
I returned to Mt. Baldy Thursday, though Liz had an appointment and didn't come with me. Thunder would be open all day and hopefully chair 4 would open sometime.
Again I arrived at 8AM, but to an even smaller crowd and I loaded Thunder before 9AM. By midday there were again two rows of parking filled, but people didn't come quite as early as on Wednesday.
Most trees in the Notch area were caked with rime all over from variable winds, but on the south side of Thunder the wind coming up Icehouse Canyon was more consistent.
Thus the rime is elongated two feet on the windward side of this pole.
I was a bit worked over from the prior day, so with a nearly empty mountain I warmed up on cruisers Fire Road/Bonanza and Shortcut/Robin's. Next was Emile's, which remained is as good shape as the end of the prior day. I skied halfway down Skyline and ventured into Tube.
Snow was packed powder but not quite as smooth or consistent as the other tree sectors I had skied on Thunder. I also skied the trees between Goldridge and Bonanza. These are tighter trees with a less direct fall line but snow stays very soft in there.
What I did not get to ski was South Bowl.
Just left of center into the trees a patroller was digging a pit. The open area in front of the trees was entirely hardpacked. When it opens, it will be best traversing out the ridgeline and dropping into the trees when the slope bends to face more north.
I tested Herb's and Andy's, which drop off Fire Road into Robin's. These face west and a bit south and the upper parts of both were pretty bad in terms of both hard snow and obstacles to avoid. So I finished up my 10 runs on Thunder in the places I knew were good like Robin's trees and Emile's trees. I needed a break and went in for a bowl of chili about 11:30.
Coming out of lunch I could see a couple of lifties at the base of chair 4, but it wasn't moving so I decided to ski to the bottom. I went for Nightmare and nearly had one. The entry had been scraped worse, I couldn't hold an edge on it, slipped with a hard hip check on the ice and perhaps rock but fortunately got my lower ski back on enough edge to steer into a pitch of softer snow where I could stop. I continued the traverse into Nightmare, where the snow surface had tightened up vs. Wednesday. There was no melt freeze but it was firm chalk, and there's no question I would have slid a long way if I had not arrested that fall. Nightmare is 36 degrees average for 700 vertical.
Returning to the Notch, I saw a few people lined up at chair 4 and patrol said 20 minutes, but the lift was not moving so I headed for Thunder. This was not a great decision, as Thunder came to a halt at 1PM while I was on the third chair from the top unloading, about the same time chair 4 opened. After 10 minutes, Thunder started moving, but very slowly. From my position I was off Thunder soon and skied Mullin's Mile to reach chair 4 directly.
From the top of chair 4 here's the view of Thunder.
From here you can see San Gorgonio in the distance.
I skied Spring Ridge to test the snow at the same due south aspect as Holcumac would be lower down. The snow was cream cheese, good as long as you didn't hit someone's else's tracks. But it was thin, as there was surely no base over here before the recent storm. View of tracks near chair 4:
After my third chair ride I ventured to Holcumac. There's a very short window of skiability after a storm as it's relatively steep and south facing. When chair 4 doesn't open until the second day, it can already be melt/frozen from the first day. But fortunately Wednesday was cold. Thursday was only slightly warmer, but all the south facing on chair 4 was softening, so in the immediate future the best skiing over there will be on the groomers Roller Coaster an Turkey Shoot.
From the top of Holcumac, there's a panoramic view of all of the Thunder terrain from Bonanza to South Bowl, so I've put a few labels above selected runs.
The ridge in the foreground runs from the Notch restaurant at left to the top of Nightmare at right.
The cream cheese snow was wide open and barely tracked.
I skied a couple more turns then traversed over to the other tracks at center right to have a better shot at a clean exit at the bottom. I made it to the lower fire road, which I could take to Sugarpine under chair 1.
Looking back up:
Midday the canyon under the lower chair can get quite warm in the sun. The rimed trees were starting to melt, dropping death cookies that often rolled down the hill into Sugarpine. Riding back up, on many of the trees the rime that remained was forming foot long icicles (need to zoom to see clearly).
Driving out later below the parking lot the rime/snow was melting out of trees almost continuously. Thunder is still colder and more sheltered but when it gets warmer it will happen there too.
I skied back down Bentley's around 3PM and called it a day with 18,300 vertical. Bentley's was a bit firmer than Wednesday but not as much of a change in surface as Nightmare.
These are the best conditions I've skied Baldy since I retired 8 1/2 years ago. But we are not quite yet at the standards of good seasons in the past. Those would be the years in blue or green on this chart, 11 of them between 1978 and 2010. http://bestsnow.net/scalhist.htm
Why is that? Chair 4 is thin, won't survive more than a couple of weeks of warm weather. Chair 1 has OK coverage but still a lot of hard snow and DFU situations like I encountered at the top of Nightmare. Bentley's is already the only route to the bottom both enjoyable and fairly safe (upper half of Sugarpine is all hardpack), and Bentley's has choke points near the bottom that will get worse with warm weather.
Thunder has good coverage and preservation, should have good skiing through mid to late March with normal SoCal weather. But for now that's really about 3/4 of Thunder when you consider the hard snow on the more direct west exposures.
And of course the wild card is the weather. This weekend's cold storm in the Sierra will barely skirt SoCal with a few inches at most. Next week there is speculation about an atmospheric river. One more dump like the one last Sunday/Monday would set up Baldy for a couple of months of close to full operation skiing and maybe get this season a green score on that chart. But atmospheric river storms tend to be on the warm side, and a big rain event will screw up this season just like the 4 days of early February rain put an end to the good late January skiing two seasons ago.
Just as a note, Mt. Waterman's skiing continues to suffer even relative to Mt. Baldy. Its road is still closed today Feb. 8 so it will not open this weekend Feb. 9-10. This is not a new problem. Waterman has often lost its best powder days due to its road not opening for a few days after a big storm. The track record of Baldy's road being cleared promptly after storms has been excellent since the 1990's.
I suggest SoCal weekend warriors make the effort to get out there this weekend. It has remained cold enough to preserve mostly packed powder, so this will be only the second "A" weekend of SoCal skiing on that chart since 2011.