I Survived Skiing Alpine Meadows On July Fourth

That would have been the bootleg t-shirt to print up and sell in the parking lot, “I Survived Skiing At Alpine Meadows on July Fourth”. As predicted, it was absolutely insanely busy at Alpine Meadows this morning for the final day of the ’22-’23 season. This is not a surprise to anyone that has ever skied on the 4th of July at any major resort that is still spinning lifts. I predicted this would be the result as soon as I heard that the plan was to fill the Alpine Meadows lots and the Olympic Valley lots for the big day. Was I glad I went? Absolutely, because not only was it the 4th of July, it was closing day after a long season at my home mountain.

I’m happy with my choices. I was in the Alpine Meadows lot at 6:58 and walking out to Summit at 7:10 am. That at least got me the last spot inside of the Summit Corral. Having no intention of standing in line for a free t-shirt saved me all sorts of time. Summit loaded early at 7:45, catching a lot of people off guard. Liftees had to throw about a dozen pairs of unattended skis off to the side out of the corral in order to get the line moving. That only put about a dozen people up the mountain ahead of us, and virtually all of them stopped at the top of the mountain for a holiday selfie.

We buzzed right on down to Wolverine and enjoyed the entire bowl with just myself and two ski buddies. We also beat most of the crowd to Dance Floor, getting one run in there before it turned into a freeway. Being the last day of the season, I kept my skis on as long as possible heading back to Summit. We snuck in one more Summit run taking Wolverine to Summer Road, with a short hike to Weasel one, managing to catch a gloriously uncrowded run on Weasel. With the lines for Summit and Roundhouse to the moon, we jumped on TLC for one last lap.

I milked that last lap, slogging through the mud and skiing every little patch of snow down Tiegel until my skis reached asphalt. There were lines crisscrossing every which way: Summit, Roundhouse, t-shirts, beer, and some people that seemed to just get in a line for no apparent reason at all. Three laps was two more than I expected for the day. I used about 435 paper towels to clean all of the mud from my skis, boots, and poles before putting them in the car. You never know when a trip to Mammoth might happen, but I’m not really thinking until November.

I am ending my season at 188 days and somewhere around 2.7 million vertical feet. These are definitely personal bests for me, and I may not get the opportunity to do better. A few of my friends hit 200 days for the season today, and that is something to really brag about, certainly more than just saying you went skiing on the Fourth of July in 2023.

It has been a long, arduous season for the entire staff at Alpine Meadows, with days and days of continuous snowfall and all of the work that entails. Then many of them ended up continuing to work much longer than expected. As it turns out, keeping the mountain open through the long spring and summer weekends required just as much or more work to move snow around so we could ski and ride it so late into the year. Thank you so much to all of you. See you next season.