Exciting news as Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows ski areas in beautiful Lake Tahoe California become the second Roundshot Livecam installations in North America. Squaw chose two incredible locations - Squaw Valey High Camp, at the top of the Silverado chair, and Alpine Meadows at the top of the Summit chair. These were challenging installations involving complex mounting and extreme weather considerations.
The Alpine Meadows cam is installed at 8,500 feet on the roof of the Summit chair top terminal and patrol HQ. This location affords amazing views of Lake Tahoe, Ward Peak, Granite Peak and the back of Squaw Peak. Frequent very high winds in excess of 90 mph as well as extreme rime icing certainly put the Roundshot system to the test. The superb engineering and robust weatherproof heated housing which have proven track records in the Alps and in Norway above the arctic circle are fully fit for the task.
Dealing with rime ice and wind require special configurations including mast support, parking the lens to the lee side of the prevailing winds and turning the housing every 15 minutes throughout the night to assure the ice does not freeze the housing to the mast.
Check out the 10 inches of rime icing at Alpine in the image below - extreme conditions indeed!
The Squaw Cam is fitted to a mast on the Silverado chair top terminal at an elevation of 8,400 feet. With a sweeping view of the High Camp facility and Tram terminal to Emigrant and Granite Chief peaks and down into the Silverado drainage toward Shirley Lake and Solitude.
We are excited and proud to have worked with the great folks at Squaw | Alpine to make this project a success. Special thanks to RJ, Steffan and Keith and the lift maintenance teams for the hard work and planning (and some pretty precarious climbing) that made this possible.
PM