January 9, Alpental

After hearing about the 9AM road opening, I made it into the upper Alpy lot close to 10. The road was perfect and there was no traffic backed up or slowed. There were 2 dozen vehicles in the lower lot and none in the upper. The lower runs had 6-8" of beautiful cascade powder and offered fresh tracks throughout the day, due to the lack of skiers.
Chair 2 opened around noon with at least 1' of even better quality pow. The patrol was nice enough to open what had been mostly closed on the edelweiss side. International and Adrenalin were phenomenal.
Alpental received 13" of rain over the past week, making for a perfectly smooth base under the pow. There were numerous unmarked holes and breaks, so watch out.

I was trying to figure out what "TBD" ment on the sight fri AM?
Guess it was not " to be denied"

Alpental was great again on saturday 1/10. Snowpack experienced significant consolidation from the midweek rain event, but was covered with a nice fresh 6-12" blanket from 1/8-1/9 snow. Basically everything that had been closed the previous week was open, however, as previously stated, lots of unmarked hazards ie: holes, creek beds, avalanche debris (lower 'nash!). There were no lines all day on either Chair 2 or Armstrong. I'm guessing the dual effects of 7-12" of rain and playoff football kept people away. Definitely found myself skiing tentatively after having some close encounters with phantom creek beds on Snake Dance. I'm not sure how it fared today due to the light rain...