May 1st, Alpental -- not open but still here it is

Some of this is reposted from the BC thread.

I was poking around at Alpental yesterday, and the AVALANCHE conditions seemed pretty scary to me. I always admit I'm miles from an expert but here is what I saw:

There is a lot of wet heavy snow, over a foot in places. Seems like it might have been windy when it snowed.

As it heated there were a lot of tree bombs dropping, and decent-sized pinwheels here and there.

There were little bits of rubble and little "beds" where many, many small, shallow (a few inches) wet snow slides had slide in terrain that might have been less than 30 degrees steep.

I didn't dig much but probed quite a bit and the layer bonding the new snow to the old felt pretty hollow in places.

At about 12 noon a slough came of the big cliff at Alpy. It was big enough that I first noticed it by hearing it, all the way at the base area. It triggered a bigger wet snow slide where it fell onto Lower Iinternational, but it wasn't really big or deep and didn't run far, maybe 30 yards.

At around 1:15 I heard a much bigger sounding, deep rumbling slide somewhere on the far side of Mt. Snoqualmie. I couldn't see it, but sure could hear it. It went on for quite a while, and had a deep base sound. this was as a group of skiers was coming off the Alpy road side of Mt. Snoqualmie, but it wasn't near them -- much farther back.

All that said, I SAW no evidence of slabs, or of the whole layer of new snow sliding.

It was fun on the way down, but I felt pretty paranoid too. I remember a few year back being up there in a similar May day just after closing day, skinning across the cat track under the cliff. I seemed pretty warm so I motored. I turned around just as I'd finished to exposed section and saw 2 feet of 40mph concrete pour over 50 yards of the cat track, and continue down nearly to the flats.

Another time I was up there on a warm spring day and a older guy working at closing lifts told me that one year in Spring Lower Int. let go and didn't stop till just above the top of Sessel, leaving a 6 foot pile of debis at the toe

Anyway it was a lot of fun and nice to be outside in the sunshine. Still otta be careful though.

I remember riding up Armstrong years ago in late April, watching a small point slough at the top of Shot 6 turn into a slide that ran half way through Meister leaving a rather large deposition.