California Snow Season 2026- A Snowboarder's Lament

I Contain Multitudes (And None of Them Are Ready for Winter to end).

Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes.

I also contain 2026 IKON, and EPIC season passes I didn't ride enough. Walt Whitman said that- the first part, Not the IKON/EPIC part. And both of us, I think, would be equally confused standing at the top of Palisades right now, staring out at a mountain that is rapidly turning from a cathedral of white into something that looks unsettlingly like October in New Jersey.

I was ready for a big year in California. It started that way. November came in swinging big atmospheric rivers, the kind that make you text your crew at 2am with the single word EPIC and three snow emojis. Christmas? Some snow. New Year's? Buried. Mid-February... lil bit, so it was pow days at Sierra at Tahoe.

And then came March... March, 2026, arrived wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a shit eating grin that said sorry not sorry. Temperatures running well above average. A dry spell so severe the mountain forecasters had to start using the word "crashed" to describe what was happening to our snowpack- a meteorological crime.

Here is something nobody tells you about being a California snowboarder: you are, constitutionally, an optimist of the most delusional variety. You have to be. Every season you look at the Pacific and go: this year MF. Every year you bookmark OpenSnow. You refresh it like its Instagram. Compulsively. With hope. With dread. With the full awareness that you are probably going to hurt yourself and YET you do it anyway.

And this season, this emotionally complicated rollercoaster of a season it had such promise. It had that specific joy of riding a Sierra slope at 8am when the light is still blue and the mountain is yours and you feel, briefly, like the universe was assembled specifically so that this moment could happen to you.

It also had rain. So much fucking rain falling that resorts started issuing statements written entirely in the passive tense of bad news. "Conditions have evolved." "Closures have been necessitated". That's when we knew we were fucked.

I want to speak directly to my fellow season pass holders for a moment. The ones who bought early to lock in the "rest rate" with full optimism, who mapped out every trip in a spreadsheet, who said things like "I'm gonna ride at least 60 days this season" as if Cali weather is not known primarily for its instability and capacity for heartbreak.

Yes, we had a plan. The mountain had other plans. And I don't want to be dramatic about it but losing a California ski season mid-March feels like reading a perfect novel and then finding out the last hundred pages were RIPPED OUT.

EARLY CLOSURES, 2026Homewood: closed. Sierra at Tahoe: closed. Big Bear: closed. Dodge Ridge: closed. Heavenly: shutting down ahead of schedule. Palisades Tahoe which had its sights set on Memorial Day now hoping to make it to April. Mammoth still hanging on, bless its heart.

Mammoth is the friend who shows up to the party at midnight, stays well after everyone else has gone home. Mammoth, sitting at 11,000 feet on a dormant volcano, accumulates enough snow to survive almost anything. Mammoth may still be open near Memorial Day. Mammoth is built different. We salute you, Mammoth. You absolute beast of a mountain.

I keep thinking about Whitman- bear with me here because his whole thing was that you could hold contradictions inside you without falling apart. The universe is vast and you are small and it contains death and joy and mud and snow, and transcendence all at once, and the correct response is not to resolve the tension but to stand in it and yell. Loudly.

That's kind of what it feels like to be a snowboarder in California in 2026. You hold the memory of that powder day next to the image of brown patches on the run you rode last week. You feel grief and gratitude so close together they're basically the same thing. The season was real. It happened. The snow was under your feet. The edges caught. You flew.

And now it's melting, and you're standing in the parking lot, its 63 degrees, eating a breakfast burrito, thinking was this worth the drive?

SO NOW WE FACE The Grief Cycle of a California Snowboarder

Stage 1: Denial. " It'll come back. I've seen huge storms in July"... It does not come back. You know it won't come back. You say it anyway because the human capacity for hope is ever the wiser.

Stage 2: Bargaining. You check every long-range forecast looking for a cold front. You find one. It's 40% chance. You text the crew. The crew responds immediately because they were already doing the same thing from the beach.

Stage 3: Anger. March temperatures running so far above average it feels like someones playing a trick. The snowpack peaked at 75% and then melted so fast the scientists had to describe it as a "crash." We went from 75% to 15% in four weeks. Four weeks! I have leftovers in my fridge older than that snow.

Stage 4: Depression. You walk past your gear in the garage and you don't even look at it. Your boots sit in the corner like a couple of old friends who went on a trip and came back quieter. Your board has a thin layer of end-of-season regret on the edges. You know you should wax it for next year. You don't do it yet.

Stage 5: Acceptance -no, wait, OR Stage 5: buy a Japan Trip. You swear you saw on IG Hokkaido powder was bangin this year.

But here's what I keep coming back to, the thing that softens the sting: the mountain was generous if only for a brief moment. Over one hundred inches at some spots. A record-setting February dump. Days so good they almost don't feel real in memory, like a dream you're not sure you actually had. A dry spell early in the year, then a second one in March, the kind that makes you question your life choices.

We are snowboarders. We chose the most temperamental sport in a sport full of temperamental options. We tie our happiness to weather systems. We build our calendars around storm reports. We drive four hours in a blizzard because the forecast said 18 inches and we would walk over glass for 18 inches and have zero regrets.

California's snowpack is now sitting below half its seasonal average. Most of the smaller resorts are done. The big dogs are limping toward April. But we got in a few runs. We got those mornings when the whole mountain was ours and the snow fell straight down through cold air and everything was briefly, completely, unreasonably perfect.

The mountain gave us everything it had. We should probably say thank you before we start complaining.

See You Next Season, California

So to this season that appears to be ending before its time: thank you for showing up, even weird, even with all your drama and your betrayal. To the mountains: thank you for existing at all, which is genuinely kind of miraculous if you think about it for more than five seconds. To my crew: thank you for every 4am carpool, every parking lot beer, and every lift ride where we said nothing because there was nothing to say and the view was enough.

And to the snowpack, currently crashing toward 15% while March temperatures give us the middle finger: I understand you have other places to be. I understand the physics of heat and water, I do. I just want you to know that your timing was terrible, and we will be back in November with season passes with absolutely no lessons learned.

I am large. I contain multitudes. I'll see you on the mountain.