claurel
New member
I popped over to Alpental for the day to enjoy the bounty of the latest PNW storm cycle before the warm-up. Yesterday would have been a better day in terms of snow quality (colder), but the visibility was much better today.
Lifts at Alpental generally start running at 9:00am, but patrol was doing heavy avalanche control work, and even the base lifts didn't open until about 9:40am. Telemetry reported only 6" of overnight snow at mid-mountain, but over the last five days, there has been around 3-4 feet of new snow. My guess is that they were concerned about instability as temperatures warmed through the day.
This was only the third day of operations at Alpental this season. The warm temperatures took their toll here, since the base elevation is 3000', there's no snowmaking, and the terrain isn't graded like the other I-90 areas (which have been open for a couple weeks now.) Fortunately, the latest storms made it possible to open everything, including the steep terrain that's the big draw at Alpental. There were few obvious areas of thin cover, though if you're a regular, you can recognize that the terrain isn't filled in as much as it typically would be.
Over the summer, Alpental replaced the old squeaky Edelweiss double chair with a fixed grip triple. I've got some serious nostalgia for the old chair, but the capacity upgrade was necessary. With that an the recently added International triple chair, it's possible get a lot more laps in.
The old Edelweiss (Chair 2) shed is still there...
The view east toward Keechelus Lake
Riding up International Chair (just added last season)
A few more rocks and cliffs than usual for early January
Big Alpy conifers shedding snow as the temperatures warm
Lifts at Alpental generally start running at 9:00am, but patrol was doing heavy avalanche control work, and even the base lifts didn't open until about 9:40am. Telemetry reported only 6" of overnight snow at mid-mountain, but over the last five days, there has been around 3-4 feet of new snow. My guess is that they were concerned about instability as temperatures warmed through the day.
This was only the third day of operations at Alpental this season. The warm temperatures took their toll here, since the base elevation is 3000', there's no snowmaking, and the terrain isn't graded like the other I-90 areas (which have been open for a couple weeks now.) Fortunately, the latest storms made it possible to open everything, including the steep terrain that's the big draw at Alpental. There were few obvious areas of thin cover, though if you're a regular, you can recognize that the terrain isn't filled in as much as it typically would be.
Over the summer, Alpental replaced the old squeaky Edelweiss double chair with a fixed grip triple. I've got some serious nostalgia for the old chair, but the capacity upgrade was necessary. With that an the recently added International triple chair, it's possible get a lot more laps in.
The old Edelweiss (Chair 2) shed is still there...
The view east toward Keechelus Lake
Riding up International Chair (just added last season)
A few more rocks and cliffs than usual for early January
Big Alpy conifers shedding snow as the temperatures warm