January 12, Alpental

Oh man it was good today. After taking one obligatory run on the Edelweiss side, I spent the day making laps down International and Elevator Gate. The left side of Elevator, where the terrain rolls over pretty steeply and ends with those finger-y cliff-y things was marginally windpacked and absolutely phenominal. Despite being a convex, 40 degree slope with some obvious wind loading I took my chances and found... face shot after face shot in snow that didn't even slough the first, second, or third time I skied it. I kept getting what amounted to fresh tracks by figure-eighting the ones I'd laid down the previous run. It was pretty spectacular. The same can be said for Rocksoff. It had been skied yesterday and those tracks had been partially filled in, but from the pillowy skier's left entrance all the way down the left side was untouched. Nice.