What Happens on Olympic Valley's Storm Mornings, and What Changes This Winter
November 5, 2026
November 5, 2026
On the morning after a big storm, the ski patrol at Palisades Tahoe has historically started work as early as 5 a.m. Then it waited. Patrollers could not start their avalanche routes until the sun was up and there was light to work by. If you have stood in a lift line on a powder morning watching the upper mountain stay roped, that wait is part of the reason.
This winter, more of that work moves out of patrollers' hands and onto fixed equipment that can be fired from a distance, in the dark and in storms. Palisades Tahoe is putting $3.2 million into remote avalanche control systems for the 2026/27 season, Moonshine Ink reported in September. The shift is in which parts of the job depend on daylight and on people walking into avalanche terrain. It does not take decisions away from Patrol.
Palisades described its storm-morning routine in detail in a 2019 operations post, written during the record February when more than 25 feet of snow fell in a single month. The figures are from that winter and describe how the work ran then, not today's inventory. They still show why some storm mornings take so long.
At the time, the Palisades side of the valley was split into five avalanche "complexes" with 28 mitigation routes. On a typical day after a storm, patrol fired several Gazex cannons and also placed more than 500 hand charges. Teams of two to four patrollers worked each route. A route took anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours. Many could not begin until an earlier route was finished, and the whole program could take a full day or more depending on wind, visibility, continued snowfall and the condition of the snow surface before the storm.
Will Paden, then the patrol director at what was still called Squaw Valley, explained why the job is so big: "There are hundreds of avalanche paths at Palisades Tahoe. Squaw Valley likely has more avalanche-prone terrain than any other ski area in the country." He added that the patrol had the most extensive Gazex installations of any ski area in the country and used more explosives than any other.
So the hold on a storm morning has had three causes. Patrollers need light to start. Routes run in sequence. Each route needs people physically present in the start zones. The new equipment takes aim at the third cause, and that helps with the first two.
The resort's season preview calls this one of its largest avalanche-mitigation investments to date. It covers three kinds of equipment, and each one triggers a slide in a different way.
| System | Where it's going | How it triggers a slide |
|---|---|---|
| Gazex and Gazflex exploders | Six new units on the Palisades side | A fixed installation ignites a gas mixture, creating an explosion in the air above the snowpack |
| CATEX cable system | The Funnel, at Palisades | Pylons, pulleys and wires carry an explosive charge out over the hazard |
| Wyssen avalanche towers | Five towers on the Alpine side | A tower lowers a selected charge from a deployment box, and it detonates above the snow |
In each case, nobody has to stand in the avalanche path when the charge goes off. MND, the company behind Gazex, says its system works around the clock and in any weather, with no personnel in the avalanche-prone area during triggering. Wyssen says the same about remote operation of its towers. CATEX lines have their own limits, including cable icing and a hazard to helicopters.
The 2019 description shows how this fits into a storm morning. Even then, Gazex cannons were fired before patrol teams set out on their first routes of the day. They were sometimes fired again in the evening to keep access open for the swing-shift and graveyard grooming crews working overnight. Remote equipment already handled the hours before patrollers could go out. This season adds more of it, plus two new types of system, so more of that early work can happen before teams head into the terrain.
The resort says the new systems can be run during heavy snowfall, strong winds and poor visibility. Those are the conditions that slowed hand routes in the 2019 account. Amy Ohran, president and COO of Palisades Tahoe, framed it in terms of the morning itself in her comments to Moonshine Ink: "Storm mornings require an incredible amount of work before the mountain can open. These systems will allow our teams to conduct important avalanche mitigation work more efficiently while reducing the amount of time employees need to spend traveling through avalanche terrain."
The resort is also clear that the technology "doesn't replace the expertise and decision-making of Patrol." After a charge goes off, someone still has to judge the result, check the slope and decide whether it can open. Mammoth Mountain's 2026 explainer on the same kind of equipment makes this point too. Remote systems give more flexibility in heavy storms, but assessment is still required, and terrain openings can still be delayed.
What remote systems can reliably reduce is the work that only happens when people walk into start zones. The time it takes to judge a slope after a storm stays with Patrol.
Gazex has been part of the valley's winter for years. The Sierra Sun reported that eight fixed Gazex structures were installed before the 2017–18 season, and that the first county permit was issued in 2015. Sound and vibration came up then, and Placer County studied them. In 2019 the Sierra Sun reported that the county's study found Gazex sound and vibration below state and federal criteria for hearing and structural damage.
The new Gazex and Gazflex units on the Palisades side, along with the CATEX in The Funnel, add to an approach the valley already knows. Of the new installations, The Funnel is the one the resort has placed on a specific named run.
Palisades Tahoe has set Opening Day for Wednesday, Nov. 25, weather and conditions permitting. The resort's opening-day listing says lift and terrain availability will depend on conditions. Before and just after opening, the valley's calendar fills in quickly:
There is also a quieter project lower on the mountain. The resort has expanded snowmaking along Mountain Run, the main route from the upper mountain to the Palisades base, to support top-to-bottom skiing early in the season and keep coverage longer into spring. On a storm morning, the remote systems are about opening upper terrain. Mountain Run is about getting skiers back down to the base.
If you own in Olympic Valley and are away when the storms hit, it helps to have someone local who follows how the mountain's season is running. Jeremy Jacobson has worked in this valley through more than 25 winters and is glad to talk through what a season here looks like up close. Let's Connect.
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