April 8, 2006, Alpental

Just got back from a wet but fun day at the Alp'...
Raining pretty good by the time I left at noon, but snowing (almost) at the top.  Soft snow made for nice tele bump skiing off the top.  They have lost a LOT of snow over this past week.  There are already a few bare spots developing  on the lower mountain.  Kinda depressing, actually. :'(  Hardly anyone there.

There are also a few paths of in bounds wet snow slide debris, most noteably under the cliffs of lower International and then of course over at Shot Six.  Beware the mank!

That is depressing. We were thinking about heading up tomorrow, but now thinking maybe not.

Oh well, it has been quite a season after the disaster of last year.

What was going on at the uber booter? Did you happen to go check it out? I was skiing there Friday and saw the jump they built for it. It was monumental. Unfortunately I didn't get to watch anybody air test it.

I did take a look over there. That thing was huge!!!! It was a little bit foggy from that elevation and up, so I really doubt they had much in the way of hucksters willing to participate. If you can't see the landing AND the landing is bottomless goo, it coud be bad. :

4/9/06 - Sunday at Alpental. Even though we were there for only an hour or so, we got showered on enough to wet out the gear and both of us are suffereing colds so we bagged it at around noon. Based on other's reports it seems we got there too early for the afternoon clearup. WX = 38F, overcast with snain showers. No crowd, skied right onto the lifts (St Bernard & Armstrong, Chair 2 for the top). LOTS of wet slides all over the place, so unsurprised that the BC was closed. The cattrack had at a couple of sets of debris across it that had come down from below the cliff (shots 7 & 8?) and extending down into Eisenfallen & Dom.

Only thing to add is to start watching out for underlying rocks coming out. Even with 95" of snow base I pulled a turn in a patch of new on the skiers right side of upper Deb's Gold (next to the Meister Ridge) and suffered this foot long gouge that ripped the ptex out down to the base. At least the edge was only gouged and not ripped out.
Heard that this was the last weekend for Central, so it's only Alpy until they close in a few more weekends. TomK & Kerry