California’s snow storms have Tahoe ski resorts poised for big Presidents Day weekend
The slopes are ready. Are you?
Ski resorts in the greater Lake Tahoe area have faced formidable challenges in recent years including California’s drought, warming climate, the COVID-19 pandemic and devastating wildfires.
But now, fresh off weeks of unrelenting atmospheric rivers that dumped feet of snow in the mountains, those resorts can now cash in.
Powder is fresh, with snow showers earlier this week topping off the mountains ahead of Presidents Day weekend – and without any serious storms in the forecast that would render mountain travel dangerous, as had been the case throughout for much of late December and the first three weeks of January.
“Mother Nature was generous,” said Tom Fortune, vice president and chief operating officer of Heavenly Resort and Vail Resorts’ Tahoe region, which includes Heavenly, Northstar and Kirkwood. “It’s been nearly perfect here the last couple of weeks.”
As those near-perfect conditions become tougher to predict amid a changing climate in the central Sierra Nevada, the success of the region’s tourist economy may grow even more heavily dependent on these winter weather windows: capitalizing on them when they happen, and adapting for when they don’t.
Storms dumped a deep snow base for Tahoe resorts
Sierra snowfall has become more prone to whipsawing between extremes as the effects of climate change mount.
In 2021, Palisades Tahoe managed to open its season early, before the end of October, thanks to a powerful snowstorm.
Just a few weeks later, no Tahoe’s major resort was open for Thanksgiving weekend; Heavenly, Northstar and Sugar Bowl Resort had to push back their planned season-opening dates due to warm, dry weather.
Then, faced with heavy snow last March and April, some resorts were able to extend their seasons.
This season has gotten off to a steadier start, beginning in late 2022 with above-average conditions even before the spate of atmospheric rivers started to roll through. Northstar and Heavenly opened a week earlier than expected, and Kirkwood three weeks earlier, in November.
Those three properties, all under the Vail Resorts brand, enjoyed about a three-week Christmas holiday with busy slopes, Fortune said.
Then came the big storms.
“We saw 300-something inches of snow, and a lot of it came without breaks,” Fortune said. “We’ve got a 116-inch base, which is just amazing.”
Palisades Tahoe by mid-week had tallied 392 inches, resort spokesman Patrick Lacey said. That’s already knocking on the door of the resort’s roughly 400-inch average – for the entire season.
Nonstop stormy weather also brought some obstacles. Heavenly lost power on New Year’s Day amid extreme wind gusts. On numerous occasions from late December through early January, snow whited out mountain highways, bringing traffic to a crawl if not turning travelers around.
“It’s been a wild year,” Fortune said.
Communicating with incoming resort guests has been key, he said.
“On weekends, we have seen earlier arriving guests. That’s one thing that we’ve been messaging is to check conditions before you come, and guests are taking that to heart.”
Fortune and Lacey urged guests to check the resorts’ websites, road conditions from Caltrans and weather forecasts in advance of their visits.
“I definitely do believe that this will be a very busy February as well as March,” Lacey said. “Definitely be prepared … especially during weekends.”
Sierra-at-Tahoe recovers after Caldor Fire
One of the South Lake Tahoe area’s busiest resorts, Sierra-at-Tahoe remained closed for the entire 2021-22 ski season due to severe damage sustained during the Caldor Fire.
Repairs at Sierra-at-Tahoe took longer than initially anticipated.
Replacement of key equipment was hampered, resort officials said, due to global supply chain issues amid the pandemic. One of the resort’s two main ski lifts, the Grandview Express, had its haul rope damaged in the Caldor Fire. Its replacement had to be manufactured in Switzerland.
The resort managed a one-weekend-only opening last April to celebrate its 75th anniversary, but couldn’t fully reopen until this past December.
Sierra-at-Tahoe management hopes there can be silver linings after the gutting 2021 wildfire.
“Many of the areas that were once inaccessible due to tree density have now opened up, creating a true bowl experience,” resort officials wrote in a Dec. 15 news release announcing the reopening. “Not only are there uncovered lines, but entirely new pockets of terrain that have never been touched before await.”
But January’s storms brought more trouble to the West Bowl. Winds topping 100 mph damaged communication lines on Jan. 23, Sierra-at-Tahoe said in a blog post, forcing the bowl’s closure until Feb. 4.
“West Bowl was the hardest to see after the fire — it was hit directly and the devastation was heartbreaking,” John Rice, general manager of Sierra-at-Tahoe, added in prepared remarks. “To see it filled with soft snowy pillows on a wide-open landscape with completely different views is cathartic and reaching this point is emotional.”
Ski World Cup returns to rebranded Palisades Tahoe
After the holiday weekend, Palisades Tahoe will host the Stifel Palisades Tahoe Cup from Feb. 24 to Feb. 26. The event is a stop on the international Audi FIS Ski World Cup Tour.
Palisades Tahoe will host the men’s slalom and giant slalom events. The resort last hosted a World Cup event in 2017, for the women’s alpine event.
The popular ski resort, which was known for decades as Squaw Valley, changed its name in 2021 to Palisades Tahoe. Resort owners with Alterra Mountain Co. committed in 2020 to remove the “racist and sexist slur against Indigenous women.”
With the World Cup event, “we’re putting Palisades Tahoe on the map with the new name,” Lacey said.
The new name, brand and logo are accompanied by infrastructure changes as well.
The resort opened a new gondola in late December to connect its two bases – formerly the Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows bases, now the Palisades and Alpine bases. The 2.4-mile gondola ride takes 16 minutes.
In January, Palisades Tahoe opened its upgraded Red Dog six-seater lift. The Red Dog lift will be used for the Stifel Palisades Tahoe Cup, Lacey said.
School’s out, so bring the kids
Lake Tahoe, Tahoe Truckee and San Juan unified school districts are each adjourned all of next week, as Presidents Day overlaps with Ski Week, also called Ski Skate Week.
The observance is exactly what it sounds like: a week dedicated to skiing, snowboarding and skateboarding.
“Kind of like spring break is more like college kids and all that, Ski Week is really more a family-focused time,” Fortune said. “Our ski schools are really busy during Ski Week, giving more lessons. The days are starting to get longer.
“It’s kind of our big last hoorah as far as holidays go.”
Mount Rose, on the Nevada side of the lake near Reno, will host high school championship races Feb. 21 and Feb. 22.
Tahoe Donner Downhill Ski Resort is marking the holiday week with a fireworks display on the evening of Feb. 18, as well as its family-friendly series of “Superstar” competitions all week.
Safety first on the slopes
The mountains shouldn’t be nearly as blustery over the next several days as they were last month, but high traffic on the slopes brings its own safety concerns.
“Make sure to stay in control when you are skiing, and stay 15 feet away from folks,” said Lacey, the Palisades Tahoe spokesman. “Not for COVID, but to stay a safe distance.”
In December, the Tahoe Nordic Search and Rescue Team rescued a skier who went missing after dark near Palisades Tahoe’s Alpine base, authorities said at the time.
Ski accidents sometimes end in tragedy.
Last February, North Tahoe High School sophomore Scotty Lapp, who was a member of the Palisades Tahoe Big Mountain Competition Team, died after a collision with another competitive teenage skier at Palisades Tahoe.
A 43-year-old Truckee skier who went missing Christmas 2021 near Northstar also died, with his body found the following January.
Resorts branch out as Tahoe’s climate warms
Changing landscapes may be a new normal for the Tahoe ski scene, even in the absence of another damaging fire like the one that upended 2021-22 for Sierra-at-Tahoe.
A 2021 study published by the journal Nature Reviews found that “persistent low-to-no snow conditions” will plague the Sierra Nevada in 35 years, due to global warming shrinking the snowy season.
Resorts across the region have responded by diversifying their recreation offerings — creating mountain biking trails, rope courses and more — and acquiring more powerful snow-making equipment to keep the slopes available when the snow doesn’t dump like it has this year.
February is a key month for the region: Nearly 61,000 motel and hotel rooms were rented during February 2021 on the California side of Tahoe’s south shore, according to data from the Lake Tahoe Visitors Authority. That was the most of any winter month dating back to 2013.
This story was originally published February 17, 2023 at 5:00 AM.
