Alpine Meadows, California

We used to ski at Alpine every year or so when the kids were learning to ski.  When we were going there they had some great lift ticket deals for kids, so it was popular with families.  They would also often stay open into late May or June, so we did some late Spring skiing there.  We took a long break from skiing there around 2005 when we got a house in South Lake Tahoe, but returned in 2026 when we got Ikon passes.

Alpine Meadows is part of Palisades Tahoe, and as of the 22/23 season they are connected via a gondola.  You cannot ski between the 2 parts of the resort though, so we have divided the review into 2 parts and show the combined stats as well as the individual stats.

Stats – Palisades Tahoe

Real Vertical ?	2510′, Rank: 46
Size	6000 Acres, Rank: 3
Annual Snowfall ?	450″ claimed / 369″ actual, Rank: 19
Lift Pods ?	26, Rank: 2
Distinct Trails ?	250, Rank: 2
Our Rating	★★★★
Resort website	https://www.palisadestahoe.com

Stats – Alpine Meadows

Real Vertical ?	1,802′
Size	2,400 Acres
Annual Snowfall ?	402″ claimed / 363″ actual
Lift Pods ?	9
Distinct Trails ?	100
Review Date	January 2026 (multiple visits from 2001-2014)
Number of visits	8 +-

Alpine Meadows Review

Although we were never Alpine regulars, we have always had a great time there.  It is a very interesting area with a nice variety of steeper blue and black runs, and a large open bowl on the back side called Sherwood.  They do some steeper grooming than a lot of places do.  There is some great easily accessible side-country that attracts a lot of experienced locals, much like Kirkwood does.  In fact Alpine and Kirkwood are very similar in many ways, with a similar vibe about the place.

Lift Pods

On the backside, the Sherwood Chair is very popular.  It faces south though, so melts out long before the frontside does.  The vast bowl area to lookers left is one of the best powder stash’s in Tahoe accessible via a moderate hike from the top of the Summit chair on the frontside.  The groomed Sherwood trail is very wide and is perfect for lower intermediates, who don’t have a lot of other choices at this resort.

 

The Lakeview chair is an old fixed grip triple that gets a lot of traffic and really needs an upgrade.  These are traditional runs cut through forest and thus are a rarity at Palisades.  The steepness is just right for groomers but the vertical drop is a modest 845′.

The Scott chair is another fixed-grip chair but the terrain there is less suitable for most skiers so it’s not as crowded as Lakeview.  There are only 3 runs and 2 of them are marked black and are ungroomed, suitable only when the snow is good.

Treeline Cirque is the newest chair and is mostly used for access to other chairs from the base area. But it does serve the most popular low intermediate runs on the frontside and has a decent vertical of slightly over 1,000 ft.

The Summit Express is the main chair at Alpine.  Roundhouse serves the lower portion of this pod as well. Summit serves a large bowl on either side and takes you to the highest point.  This lift gives you a vertical drop of just over 1,500.  In past years when they stayed open to May this would be the only running chair.

The Kangaroo lift pod is a nice separate area of the mountain with basically a single run below it (even though the trail map shows 2 distinct trails. It is low-intermediate terrain so attracts a lot of people who are progressing from strictly green trails to slightly more advanced terrain.

The good

• There are plenty of steeps to be had on just about every aspect of the mountain, so this is a great place for experts.
• Advanced skiers will enjoy the steep groomers and bumps.
• There is some easily accessed sidecountry.
• Actual reported snowfall is in the top 10 for North America.
• The Base to Base gondola give you the opportunity to ski both Alpine and Olympic Valley in the same day without taking a shuttle bus.

The bad

• Long lines at the Sherwood, Lakeview, and Summit chairs on weekends
• Getting to the resort on a powder day from Truckee is impossible with long backups.  It’s not nearly as bad coming in from the Tahoe City side of highway 89.
• Still have quite a few lifts that could be converted t
• There is only 1800 vertical, and much of the top is steep so long blues are absent, and most of the runs will be top-to-bottom runs, which feels a bit limiting at times
• The elevation is too low and the snow quality suffers because of it

The bottom line

Alpine is a great resort and if we lived in the North Lake Tahoe area it would probably be one of our regulars on a rotation along with the Palisades Tahoe Olympic Valley side and Northstar.  However, we chose to live in South Lake due to the better overall skiing experience (for us) at Kirkwood and Heavenly so it doesn’t really end up on our list of resorts to ski any more.  In recent years the traffic situation has gotten notoriously bad which is the biggest factor in the 4 star rating for the combined Palisades resort instead of 5 stars.