Yes, Pallasides Tahoe has longer and more runs but Alpine Meadows is a better place to ski with a family. Unlike PT, AP actually has a roomy base lodge along great green and blue terrain similar to PT. Views of Lake Tahoe are incredible and the staff in all work locations are warm, friendly and love helping people. The black and backwoods terrain does disappoint....highly recommend.
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Alpine Meadows ended up being my squads favorite resort between Squaw and Alpine and I don’t disagree with them. One major benefit of Alpine Meadows was that lodging options were a lot cheaper on the Alpine Meadows side. Especially for us, looking for a 10 person house, our options were a lot more limited on the Squaw side. One perk that it shares with Palisades is its close proximity to the Reno airport (<45 mins)
Now to the rankings. Alpine Meadows gets a 4/5 in snow. We had some super fun slush one of the days which was actually refreshing after riding nothing but ice in Utah. And then on the last day in Lake Tahoe we were about 10th chair on the Summit Express with 10” overnight. It was fantastic, light, fluffy, pow.
Liftlines were great at Alpine Meadows. The sunny weekday we rode had absolutely 0 lines. Yes there were lines on the powday, Saturday, but those were totally expected and understandable. There had been quite a dryspell and everyone and their mother wanted to come out for some fresh snow. Even then though, Summit Express maintained a decent line throughout the day, but you could get just as good of runs off Treeline and walk on the lift every time. Lifts were ok at Alpine. Nothing crazily fancy, no gondolas, funitels, or bubbles. But they were efficient, a 6 person chair for Summit, and a recently replaced Treeline that has a mid mountain unloading station before providing you access to the backside from the peak.
Piste trails at Alpine were great. Fun long runs from the top of Summit all the way down to the base feel like a respectable amount of vertical per lift. The groomers on the backside were pretty slushy but were a ton of fun ripping in what felt like late spring conditions. The off-piste terrain is what we finally were able to really experience on the last day. In particular, we lapped the trees in the Sherwood Cliffs area several times and had some incredible steep trees, deep snow and fun drop-offs. We also had some pretty fun slushy laps in the trees on the backside, just wish those tree sections were longer.
When it comes to child friendliness Alpine Meadows is considerably less child friendly in my opinion. Theres much less green terrain and its kept separate from the rest of the mountain. Beginners coming to the area are going to want to go to the Palisades / Squaw resort. The apres scene also seemed to be a lot better at nearby Squaw. Overall, Alpine Meadows was awesome. On weekends I’d definitely ride Alpine over Squaw to try to avoid some lift lines. It’s a nice changeup of Squaw. I would definitely go back… as always, hopefully on a deeper year
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Alpine only has about 1600' of lift served vertical, but probably has more quality terrain packed into that vertical than any other ski area in the US. I think their grooming is better than Squaw's, which is owned by the same company and on the same lift ticket. They should provide an Alpine only ticket, as the day tickets are very expensive for what you get.

For advanced skiers, you will like Alpine if you are adventurous and don't mind a little hiking and traversing. If not, go to Squaw. For those willing to put in the effort, Alpine has lots of good steeps that aren't overly moguled-Beaver Bowl, High Yellow, South Bowls, Promised land, etc.

The lift system is a little strange, with an unnecessary hike to get from the lodge to the lifts, because they located the bottom terminals too high up the hill. Getting to Sherwood Chair is a pain and getting back to Summit Chair from Hot Wheels requires knowing about a "secret traverse" because they located the lift terminal in the wrong place. The Alpine Chair's top terminal is a little too low on the ridge, necessitating a hike to get over to the south bowls. At the bottom of Summit/Roundhouse chairs, there is a bad bottleneck, and there are some miserable flats in places when the snow is sticky. If you ski all the way to the bottom of Gentian Gully/Lower 40, you will have to take a beginner lift, plus two more chairs to get back for another run.

So, I would say Alpine is best for groomers or adventurous off piste skiers that like to hike and explore.
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Unlike like the Powderhounds’ last visit during a major snow storm, there were definitely no powder days this trip and it was a low snow season. The mountain has a completely different personality when it’s not caked in bucket loads of snow.

Firstly there were no major crowds. There were people about, but definitely no lift queues and the slopes were not highly trafficked. The locals were super friendly (there was no desperation to get to the lines of powder because there weren’t any).

The terrain felt rather different; steeper and with a lot more rock features and a few little gullies to provide additional challenge. What remained was the degree of traversing and the painfully frequent returns to the base. At least the mellow spots weren’t such a problem without powder.

See our overview of Alpine Meadows for more of our thoughts on the pros and cons of Alpine Meadows, and also see the USA ski resorts ratings to see how Alpine compares to other USA resorts.
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Alpine Meadows is a simplistic ski area that is popular with expert skiers and riders. It makes a great partner to the nearby Homewood, where the terrain of each complements the other.

Big dumps can arrive at Alpine Meadows but unfortunately the competition is fierce to get to the freshies. This is not a hidden gem!

For more detailed ratings of Alpine Meadows and to see how it compares to other ski resorts around the world, see our powderhounds resort ratings.
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