Alpental 2/8/11

Alpental got a nice overnight hit of fresh snow to erase sunday's corn snow. It was about 5-6" near the base, and maybe 9" at the top of chair II. The snow was not blower but it wasn't exceptionally wet either by my judgement. It moved nicely to start out with. My buddy and I took 3 laps on the lower mountain before the upper chair opened. Awesome conditions even on the lower mountain early in the day. We hit chair II and rocked the edelwiess bowl for a few laps, which skied awesomely too. (am I saying "awesome" too much?  ) Anyway, I ended up finishing my half day with 2 more laps down upper Nash/adrenaline/lower nash bowl. The snow was still awesome up high as noon approached, the upper BC gate was open too. I could see there was huge amounts of untracked goods out there while the visibility was good and the sun peaked in and out. There wasn't a lot of people at alpental which is rare when they report fresh snow. I expected more people. Chair two had very small lift lines if you can believe that..... 

As nash got cut up, there was some scraping down to the base which was hardpacked and icey, but the fluff was still there and remained pretty moveable. The visibility was good until my last run, where the combination of flat light, rubber legs, and the long wide skis I chose that day caught up to me. The snow on the lower half of the mountain was definately getting cooked a little bit, so the goods tomorrow are going to be out the upper gate or anywhere up high.

I did take a few pictures and had a moment of reflection as I looked out into cascade range. It seemed more beautiful than it ever had to me. I supose it was always that beautiful, I was just a little more aware of it now with ghostly mists and random shafts of light drawing my eye into the distance.

I felt like up high it was light blower, definitely lost sight of the world while making some turns early on. I didn't touch the bowl, upper nash was in great shape till 1-ish, when it was getting pretty sluffed, but still soft sluffs. Mid mountain and down was turning heavy by 2:30 for sure.
It was great to have the gates open today as the runs were definitely quite cut by the days activities. BC was the place to be from noon on.

Oh and I have to say, while those pictures are great, they missed how sunny it was at times today. Beautiful! Though between the northern aspects and the clouds, the nash area was a bit dark for the mirrored googles.