To the community,

After a beautiful spring-like January, we’re excited to welcome Old Man Winter back this week with a bang. Overnight Tuesday we received 14 inches of snow on the upper mountain and it was still coming down hard (Wednesday).

Through tonight, we are expecting 2 to 4 feet by Friday morning. Forecasters are saying that the storms should taper just in time for this weekend before another set of winter weather returns early next week.

Stay tuned to the snowfall tracker and the snow report for the latest snow totals and lift openings.

In addition to the recent snow, we are also excited to announce Squaw Valley has seen significant improvements in our Net Promoter Score over the course of the season. Net Promoter Scores (NPS) are the most highly regarded customer satisfaction metric used in the hospitality industry today. Since the 2009-10 winter season, Squaw Valley’s customer satisfaction scores have moved from the bottom 20 percent of North American ski resorts to the top 20 percent, based on our Net Promoter Score. Make no mistake, we still have a long way to go to meet our guest service goals, however, the improvement serves as proof that our efforts thus far are paying off.

Top among our guest service improvements this year is our award-winning lift operations team. The department’s fearless leader, Dave Pierce, received a prestigious award and recognition last evening at the North Lake Tahoe Chamber annual awards dinner. Dave’s passion for the mountain and his dedication to providing exceptional guest service have made lasting impressions on our team members and loyal guests, and for this, we thank him.

Another area of the mountain that has seen significant improvements and recognition this season is grooming. In our unyielding commitment to improving our grooming, we have invested in six new, state-of-the-art snowcats this season. The new machines have allowed us to blanket the mountain in impeccable and seamless corduroy even on traditionally ungroomed pitches such as Tower 16 and the East Gully of Olympic Lady. So far our reviews have been outstanding, and we hope you’ve been enjoying it.

Finally, I want to congratulate Squaw Valley’s Julia Mancuso on winning a silver medal in the Super-G at the Alpine World Championships in Germany last week. Way to go Julia. We know that there are many other Julia’s in the making at Squaw Valley as shown by our ski team’s great performance at Sugar Bowl last weekend.

This storm sure proves that California skiing and riding can’t be beat. I hope to see you out there.

Warm and snow-filled regards,

Andy Wirth, Squaw Valley president and CEO