This was the driest January on record, less than an inch of snow. Not much to do but kick up some snow.

We made one of our rare visits to Alpine Meadows for my birthday. Sherwood is closed, so we took a bunch of runs off the Summit Chair.

Here’s Nancy hitting the groomer in Wolverine Bowl.

We stopped for some wine and cheese at the Alpine Chalet.

We got a trace of snow. Powder day!

Drizzly conditions, but at least the snow was soft.

Things are getting raw, again. Rocks and weeds showing on the Prosser run at Northstar.

I found an old abandoned trail above Dry Lake and wound up in someone’s back yard.

Taking Ryder down to the creek. As you can see, no snow anywhere.

Rotten conditions at Squaw. Anything worth skiing up top was on wind hold, and the Mountain Run was closed due to leaks in the snowmaking system, so we had to download on the Funitel.

Nancy takes advantage of our dry conditions to ride to work. There is zero snow in the neighborhood.

We took advantage of a drizzly day to ski softer groomers at Northstar, including some decent runs on Prosser.

We went to Alpine to ski Sherwood Bowl since everything else is very firm. You still have to hike up the High Traverse to get there, as the normal access doesn’t have any snow.

Sherwood has gotten a lot thinner since we skied it a week ago; it probably only has a week left before it gets closed.

Still, the little bit of snow remaining was good skiing, you just had to keep an eye out at all times for rocks.

We skied the Prosser run at Northstar for the first time since March 2013. It never opened last year due to lack of snow, and it’s only open now because of snowmaking.

It was terrible, the proverbial white ribbon of death, couldn’t get an edge in anywhere. Nancy skied it very, very carefully.

I came out to Squaw to ski with Chingus on his last day. Granite Chief was open after several days of being closed. We kept wondering, “Why is Granite closed?” Now we know.

It was bizarre skiing: only one run is open, and it’s awful—a sheet of ice with piles of pine cones everywhere. Combine that with flat light and you have one sketchy run.

Halfway down Chingus stopped me and said, “I have to tell you something.” “What?” “I’m not riding this chair again.”

“Agreed.”

One of the advantages of skiing at Alpine Meadows is a number of south-facing slopes that soften up when everything else is rock hard.

The biggest southern exposure at Alpine is Sherwood Bowl, a huge bowl that joins the Pacific Crest on its western side.

The snowpack is so low that you have to hike the High Traverse up near the crest to get to Sherwood Bowl because the groomer access is burned out.

We were rewarded with spring conditions—soft snow and warm temps.

I met up with Chingus for a fun day at Squaw. If you followed the sun you could find some nice lines on the eastern exposures.

We ran into an old colleague from SV Lift Ops, Eric Hurst, for some nice soft bump runs (until you hit the shade) on East Face.

Nancy joined us in the afternoon for some closing runs on Squaw Creek.

Mark “Chingus” Standen drove up for several days of skiing. The snow in Tower 16 was like April conditions—soft and thin.

Toward the end of day, the sun produced a pretty halo on the ridge over Headwall.

Northstar has two runs open on Lookout, which is twice as many as they had all of last year. The connector run is a little bumped out.

We went out to Squaw to attend a memorial for Mark “Sully” Sullivan, long-time Squaw Valley (and U.S. National) ski coach.

We got out early for some crispy runs at Squaw. There was a brisk east wind on the ridges that kept a lot of the upper mountain shut down.

Squaw is running Olympic Lady, although it’s a screwy setup due to the lack of snow at the base. You can ski GS Bowl off of KT-22 down to Oly, but you can’t ski down Exhibition or Easy Street, because there’s no snow.

Patrol has a CLOSED sign just past the Oly maze, and a rope running along Chumps to make sure the gapers don’t go down Easy Street and get stuck riding Oly.

Oh, and there’s a cat track running from the top of KT all the way down GS Bowl to Oly, so there is an “easy way down.”

Nancy getting funky.