Alpental was not so good today.
When I got there at 11am it was freezing rain and a little windy, with signs of about 5 inches of new snow. The new snow was as wet as it could possibly be. The cat track is still closed. I went up chair 2 and not until the top 200 feet did it turn to snow. One run down the bowl was not too fun, but at least it wasn't icy, just very heavy, wet snow. Then I skied Debbie's and the bottom was so heavy and sticky that I couldn't get across the flats, and I couldn't skate.
I decided to do one more run then leave, so I tried International. The entrance was good, but the main run was covered in large chunks of avy debris. I had to stay skier right to avoid the debris, and then I wrapped skier right to Adrenaline and paused to assess. It looked fairly smooth and seemed the only way down to avoid the chunky avy debris.
I was just below those Adrenaline cliffs, looking at the chute and looking at the slope above the chute when a snowboarder cut through the high track of Adrenaline above that little cliff. I think they ducked a rope to get on that high track.
As I watched, a fracture line shot out in two directions, then curved around in front of him and a large slab about 12 inches thick and probably 80 ft wide by 20 ft deep let loose and slid down the hill right toward me and the chute I was assessing. I yelled a warning to him and then made a turn away from it and slightly uphill, then stopped to watch a 2 ft thick wet, chunky, slow slide pass not 10 ft away from me and all the way down that chute. The crown of the avy was about 12 inches deep and 80 ft across. The snowboarder was moving fast and turned off of the slab just as it was releasing.
Lower International, under the main cliffs, was also full of chuncky avy debris. I made my way all the way down to the St. Bernard lift and reported the avy to ski patrol through the lifty. Ski patrol replied that they had just closed International a few minutes earlier.
By that time is was raining hard on the whole mountain, and the wind was picking up. The parking lot was full of standing and running water. I left after just 1.5 hours there and it rained hard all the way to Issaquah.
