On a very rare SoCal weekend with ski areas in full operation with winter snow conditions I decided to brave potential crowds.
1) Conditions rated to be optimal as Friday was cloudy and Saturday windy, so the usual SoCal melt/freeze was unlikely.
2) Liz has lots of doctor/dentist appointments scheduled between our Euro and Canada trips, so this was one of her few free days.
3) Maybe Super Bowl Sunday would cut down the crowds.
We arrived at Baldy just before 8AM. I dropped Liz in the ticket line, then parked and we took turns booting up. We got tickets at 8:25 same as I did Thursday. Chair 1 started loading at 8:33 but at about 1/3 capacity for about 15 minutes before the loading became a more normal 3/4 capacity. Liz took a short break from the chair 1 line.
You can see the chair 1 line going down the hill. The second level of parking is nearly full and a line of arriving cars is on the third level.
We loaded Chair 1 at 9:20 and then Thunder at 9:40. This is definitely a win on a Baldy weekend with good conditions.
Chair 4 never opened either Saturday or Sunday due to unclear mechanical issues. Overview of well covered Thunder Mt:
With no chair 4 I feared that Thunder's liftline would get bad by 11AM or so. But it remained in the 5 minute range most of the time we were there, with a peak about 10 minutes around 12:30. I think a significant part of Baldy's crowd (parking, ticket line, chair 1) was sightseers.
We warmed up on well groomed fire Road/Bonanza and irregularly groomed Shortcut/Robins.
The grooming did not matter because the snow was soft packed powder with scattered windsift, better than most of our recent days in the Alps.
Saturday's wind has closed Thunder for part of the day. It also left a lot of sastrugi at the top of Emile's.
This discouraged some people from skiing it, but past it there were a couple of narrow fall lines of smooth windbuff.
Boundary sign near top of Thunder has a considerable load of rime.
Skyline was not groomed. Snow built up in waves but it was very soft and forgiving.
Toilet Bowl variant path to Robin's:
Looking down the steep bottom pitch of Goldridge at the beginner gulch:
Idle chair 4 and its terrain are in the background.
I ventured through skier's left set of trees into South Bowl, view up:
View down South Bowl with Baldy Peak in background:
Snow in South Bowl was ~70% smooth windpack but not continuous. I did not return due the grunt work return traverse and that there were other places I wanted to check out. Tube, skier's left halfway down Skyline, did have continuously smooth windpack.
Our 13th and last run on Thunder was Liftline.
Short steep pitch from Liftline into lower Robin's:
Liz took a short break at the Notch and then skied Sugarpine to the bottom. I took two laps on chair 1.
I was going to ski Nightmare first but I noticed this chute before it.
I have probably skied that only once or twice before as it needs a lot of coverage. The upper section was narrow and usually one turn at a time. The lower part widened and was perfectly smooth.
My last run was Bentley's. The north facing pitches on its skier's left had been good Thursday but Saturday's wind left lots of sastrugi. I bailed into the main drainage of Bentley's which was so good I could ski it nonstop even at age 71.
We left at 2:55, got down to Claremont for radio reception just before Super Bowl kickoff and were home at the end of the first quarter. To no surprise the snowplayers were out in force. What was surprising was the traffic going up the hill at that hour was worse than our traffic going down.
I skied 16,400 vertical. This was another milestone for Liz' knee replacement. She never skied Baldy last season to avoid inflaming that knee and potentially interfering with our destination trips. This was a rare occasion where I predicted Baldy's snow conditions exactly right. The only disappointment was no chair 4. With current coverage and today's conditions, Eric's might have been a very impressive final run.
1) Conditions rated to be optimal as Friday was cloudy and Saturday windy, so the usual SoCal melt/freeze was unlikely.
2) Liz has lots of doctor/dentist appointments scheduled between our Euro and Canada trips, so this was one of her few free days.
3) Maybe Super Bowl Sunday would cut down the crowds.
We arrived at Baldy just before 8AM. I dropped Liz in the ticket line, then parked and we took turns booting up. We got tickets at 8:25 same as I did Thursday. Chair 1 started loading at 8:33 but at about 1/3 capacity for about 15 minutes before the loading became a more normal 3/4 capacity. Liz took a short break from the chair 1 line.
You can see the chair 1 line going down the hill. The second level of parking is nearly full and a line of arriving cars is on the third level.
We loaded Chair 1 at 9:20 and then Thunder at 9:40. This is definitely a win on a Baldy weekend with good conditions.
This was accurate except for the ALL LIFTS EXPECTED TO OPERATE. Thunder blackboard:
With no chair 4 I feared that Thunder's liftline would get bad by 11AM or so. But it remained in the 5 minute range most of the time we were there, with a peak about 10 minutes around 12:30. I think a significant part of Baldy's crowd (parking, ticket line, chair 1) was sightseers.
We warmed up on well groomed fire Road/Bonanza and irregularly groomed Shortcut/Robins.
The grooming did not matter because the snow was soft packed powder with scattered windsift, better than most of our recent days in the Alps.
Saturday's wind has closed Thunder for part of the day. It also left a lot of sastrugi at the top of Emile's.
This discouraged some people from skiing it, but past it there were a couple of narrow fall lines of smooth windbuff.
Boundary sign near top of Thunder has a considerable load of rime.
Skyline was not groomed. Snow built up in waves but it was very soft and forgiving.
Toilet Bowl variant path to Robin's:
Looking down the steep bottom pitch of Goldridge at the beginner gulch:
Idle chair 4 and its terrain are in the background.
I ventured through skier's left set of trees into South Bowl, view up:
View down South Bowl with Baldy Peak in background:
Snow in South Bowl was ~70% smooth windpack but not continuous. I did not return due the grunt work return traverse and that there were other places I wanted to check out. Tube, skier's left halfway down Skyline, did have continuously smooth windpack.
Our 13th and last run on Thunder was Liftline.
Short steep pitch from Liftline into lower Robin's:
Liz took a short break at the Notch and then skied Sugarpine to the bottom. I took two laps on chair 1.
I was going to ski Nightmare first but I noticed this chute before it.
I have probably skied that only once or twice before as it needs a lot of coverage. The upper section was narrow and usually one turn at a time. The lower part widened and was perfectly smooth.
My last run was Bentley's. The north facing pitches on its skier's left had been good Thursday but Saturday's wind left lots of sastrugi. I bailed into the main drainage of Bentley's which was so good I could ski it nonstop even at age 71.
We left at 2:55, got down to Claremont for radio reception just before Super Bowl kickoff and were home at the end of the first quarter. To no surprise the snowplayers were out in force. What was surprising was the traffic going up the hill at that hour was worse than our traffic going down.
I skied 16,400 vertical. This was another milestone for Liz' knee replacement. She never skied Baldy last season to avoid inflaming that knee and potentially interfering with our destination trips. This was a rare occasion where I predicted Baldy's snow conditions exactly right. The only disappointment was no chair 4. With current coverage and today's conditions, Eric's might have been a very impressive final run.
