Palisades Tahoe: ‘Strange vibes’ day after deadly avalanche
OLYMPIC VALLEY, Calif. – A skier sits in his après chair in the Palisades Tahoe parking lot, warming up next to a propane powered fire and points to the opened trunk, “right here, I have my full-on airbag that I brought today.”
He decided to forgo the avalanche airbag, but both he and his friend wore beacons the day after a deadly avalanche killed one and caught three others at the resort.
“I feel like yesterday was definitely on people’s minds, just from the gear that people were wearing,” the local skier says, and explains he saw many others wearing beacons as well, “I think, on resort, that’s not an everyday thing.”
Both he and his friend live in the Truckee area and ski regularly.
“When was the last time you skied with a beacon?” he asks his friend.
“Not once,” the friend responds, at least not at a resort.
Another abnormal occurrence—the noise.
“Patrol was blasting like crazy and still is,” he said around 2:00 p.m., “which is pretty unique, I would say, to today. Usually you don’t hear much of that past 10 a.m.”
Another local was surprised by the limited crowds, despite the overnight snow, “you’d expect it to be really busy on this powder day, right? But the vibe was a weird, kind of strange vibe,” he says, “and you’ve got to respect that after everything that happened yesterday.”
The longtime local and season pass holder was also surprised the resort opened KT-22 Wednesday, “It was just a day where I thought they should probably not have opened it up.”
He highlights the resort’s announcements days leading up to it, “They had this big thing, announcing it two days before…’Wednesday is the big day,'” building anticipation for the lift opening.
The avalanche occurred about a half hour after the lift opened for the first time this season, on Wednesday.
He says it’s almost like they didn’t think about another storm coming in that morning, “it would be shut down anyways at 10:30, 11, that day, so why even open it?”
“It seems a little weird,” the snowboarder says, “but you never know what goes on in mother nature, right? She always makes the final decisions, I guess…whatever they are.”
One group of friends from the Bay area says the incident didn’t deter them, “but it definitely is a big reminder,” one of them says, “it can be dangerous out here and to be as safe as you can be.”
One skier says he still feels it’s one of the safest places in the world, despite the events that happened the day before.
“It’s a part of the risk of coming to the mountains,” he says, “you can’t be completely cautious, right? You can’t close down the mountain forever, you can’t close down the mountain every time it snows.”
Palisades Tahoe’s is still investigating what caused the avalanche. The resort has opened the KT-22 lift as of Friday morning after extensive avalanche mitigation work over the past two days.
The resort reports a second avalanche occurred Thursday on the Alpine side of the resort. This time, no guests or employees were impacted.
But avalanche dangers are only getting worse. The Sierra Avalanche Center has reported considerable avalanche danger since Wednesday, and is projecting more dangerous—high avalanche danger—conditions Saturday through Sunday morning.
The National Weather Service is forecasting another storm Friday night through Sunday morning.
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