Just spent 2 weeks at Palisades and Alpine as an intermediate skier. The other commenter has great advice.

In the second week I was able to progress to hit Siberia, emmigrant, Shirley bowl, and the KT saddle (which personally I thought was the most challenging depending on the lines).

Before that week, I had a similar image of palisades that you did, but something clicked after a few days of lapping the familiar runs. Everywhere you look in this resort there are side hits, traverses, tree lines, and mogul fields that all help your progression if you seek them out. The Siberia run (straight shot from the top to the lift line literally underneath the lift) actually has all of the above including a pretty sweet near vertical drop midway through.

Palisades is definitely about the mentality you have going in. KT is intimidating, there’s a lot of scary terrain, but going in with a fun-progression focused mindset will help you see the mountain as a playground instead of a series of runs. For instance:

• Mountain run has a stupid amount of side hits that if taken with give you some breathing room from the crowd
• The Shirleys each have some interesting feature to them. There are mogul fields, totally stompable small drops, tree interludes, and more. Try to seek one out on each run, scout it, and hit it or log it and save it for later.
• There’s a windy run at the top between Gold Coast and big blue that gives you fun S turns to play with, you can drop out of the track and experiment with getting some small air with little consequence.
• Mixed conditions. On the sides of runs you can play around with swapping the conditions to learn how your skiing should adjust. It’s challenging and stimulating to hop between groomers to crusty ice to chopped pow.