January 12, 2006, Alpental Night Skiing

The rain began turning to snow a couple of miles eastbound before  the summit.  By the Alpental exit it was dumping and it stayed that way until the lifts closed.  <br><br>We hit the quad at 7pm and ran laps in deeper and deeper accumulations until we heard the dreaded "last chair" called by the squeegee wielding, good natured lift operator.<br><br>The skiing was great.  The snow was great.  Once the crowd thinned we were skiing fresh tracks wherever we pleased.  We skied freshies in all of upper Debbies on our last run.  Never done that before...but we spotted it from the chair and with burning quads, decided it looked like a fine way to arc out the night.<br><br>Upon return to the car at 10:15 we found it covered with about three inches of nice new snow.  Despite this I was a little surprised to see how low the coverage is up there right now.  No, not boney and nowhere near bare, but several of the deeper creeks were either exposed, or presented deep ruts.  A few more feet should fill it in. <br><br>I haven't done a lot of lift served skiing over the past couple of years and was caught of guard a bit by how different it all is from touring.  The speed of the high performance alpine gear, the moguls, the other sliders zooming around...I'm trending towards backcountry as a better way to go for me.  But I'll keep doing both, I'm sure .