The SoCal mountains have had 5-7 feet of snow so far in February though the biggest storm Feb. 4-6 started with heavy rain. Baldy opened Wednesday but I waited until Thursday for a better shot at Thunder being open I was skeptical of chair 1 due to that Sunday rain. As is usually the case, the first rule of Baldy is that you will not get what you expect.
Baldy's Mountain Reports this season are a good faith attempt to be more informative even though they don't always prove accurate. Last night the prediction for Thunder was :
I got there just before 8:00 and was in ticket line 8:05-8:25.
Robby Ellingson come out around 9:30 to announce conditions to us waiting for chair 1. He said that only chairs 1&2 were open to skiing Wednesday. It snowed 6-12 inches of wind packed snow over Wednesday night. This snow bonded well to what had been skied the day before but the new snow had fractured and slid on Holcumac which had not been skied. Thus patrol was going to ski cut Thunder carefully.
Shortly thereafter patrol came down to chair 1.
Chair 1 started public loading at 9:45.
My first run was Nightmare.
The snow was mostly windpacked as advertised. There was no crust or sastrugi but it did require effort, so I needed the "suck wind" breaks" that have become common with high effort skiing these past two seasons.
View up Bentley's riding chair 1 back up:
View up Nightmare:
My next two runs were in the Morgan's Grove trees between Bentley's and Nightmare.
And yes by run#3 the Baldy cloud had rolled in.
At the start of that run about 11:15 I heard the upper liftie being told that Thunder would be another 2 hours. So I took a break with a bowl of soup to gather energy for that opening. I skied down the beginner gulch and suspected problems when no one was in line for Thunder and the only activity at its base was patrol attending to an injured skier. I rode chair 2 up and skied Bentley's. At the bottom of Chair 1 an employee Cindy with a hot spot cell phone (there is no cell reception at Baldy except at top of Thunder) informed me about the just discovered mechanical issue with Thunder. Staff was being moved to work on chair 4 but there was no chance it would open today.
So I took one more run on chair 1, this time out the north facing pitches skier's left of Bentley's.
I could ski these runs a bit more fluidly as they were getting skier packed.
Lower down view to the parking lot:
I left at 2PM after a modest 7,200 vertical feet, but it was nonetheless a workout.
Although the particulars of this ski day were disappointing with no Thunder opening, the big picture review is very positive. The coverage on chair 1 is much better than I expected. The wind and skier packed snow will be good right away as opposed to sometimes when much of the mountain is skied out leaving cement-like set up powder that is difficult for 2-3 weeks afterwards. I definitely made the right call to trim the length of our Canada trip because SoCal skiing is going to be good between now and when we leave for Iron Blosam in a month.
Other local ski areas are no better in opening up after this storm. Mt. High East will open tomorrow. Slide Peak at Snow Valley was not open today and I don't see an announcement on the website despite Snow Valley getting the most snow from this storm. And Mt. Waterman continues to be screwed over by Caltrans:
Baldy's Mountain Reports this season are a good faith attempt to be more informative even though they don't always prove accurate. Last night the prediction for Thunder was :
Tonight:
View driving up above Mt. Baldy Village about 7:40:
I got there just before 8:00 and was in ticket line 8:05-8:25.
Robby Ellingson come out around 9:30 to announce conditions to us waiting for chair 1. He said that only chairs 1&2 were open to skiing Wednesday. It snowed 6-12 inches of wind packed snow over Wednesday night. This snow bonded well to what had been skied the day before but the new snow had fractured and slid on Holcumac which had not been skied. Thus patrol was going to ski cut Thunder carefully.
Shortly thereafter patrol came down to chair 1.
Chair 1 started public loading at 9:45.
My first run was Nightmare.
The snow was mostly windpacked as advertised. There was no crust or sastrugi but it did require effort, so I needed the "suck wind" breaks" that have become common with high effort skiing these past two seasons.
View up Bentley's riding chair 1 back up:
View up Nightmare:
My next two runs were in the Morgan's Grove trees between Bentley's and Nightmare.
And yes by run#3 the Baldy cloud had rolled in.
At the start of that run about 11:15 I heard the upper liftie being told that Thunder would be another 2 hours. So I took a break with a bowl of soup to gather energy for that opening. I skied down the beginner gulch and suspected problems when no one was in line for Thunder and the only activity at its base was patrol attending to an injured skier. I rode chair 2 up and skied Bentley's. At the bottom of Chair 1 an employee Cindy with a hot spot cell phone (there is no cell reception at Baldy except at top of Thunder) informed me about the just discovered mechanical issue with Thunder. Staff was being moved to work on chair 4 but there was no chance it would open today.
So I took one more run on chair 1, this time out the north facing pitches skier's left of Bentley's.
I could ski these runs a bit more fluidly as they were getting skier packed.
Lower down view to the parking lot:
I left at 2PM after a modest 7,200 vertical feet, but it was nonetheless a workout.
Although the particulars of this ski day were disappointing with no Thunder opening, the big picture review is very positive. The coverage on chair 1 is much better than I expected. The wind and skier packed snow will be good right away as opposed to sometimes when much of the mountain is skied out leaving cement-like set up powder that is difficult for 2-3 weeks afterwards. I definitely made the right call to trim the length of our Canada trip because SoCal skiing is going to be good between now and when we leave for Iron Blosam in a month.
Other local ski areas are no better in opening up after this storm. Mt. High East will open tomorrow. Slide Peak at Snow Valley was not open today and I don't see an announcement on the website despite Snow Valley getting the most snow from this storm. And Mt. Waterman continues to be screwed over by Caltrans:
While there are often grounds to critique Baldy management, somehow there is consistent timely clearing of the road between Mt. Baldy village and the ski area. Baldy employees were up there every day during this storm clearing snow, de-icing lifts, etc.
Last edited:
