Jan 14, 2014, Alp + Central, Scientific Suckage

I raced out of the city before rush hour this morning to Alpental for what I hoped would be a sleepy day of picking up Sunday's leftovers up top. Well aware of yesterday's rain and high, but not all-the-way-to-the-top snow level, I ignored the surface conditions in the parking lot which were better suited for ice skates than boots. Arriving at the top of Armstrong just a hair after nine, Chair 2 was spinning but patrol had the cat track to the upper chair roped off. A pair of patrollers staffing the rope informed those of us milling about that the upper mountain had received almost an inch of freezing rain overnight and that the upper mountain would not open until after noon at the earliest, if at all. A lift maintenance worker showed us a picture on his phone from above the Fan with the comm. line wrapped in a cylinder of ice several inches thick.

Dang. Old Man Winter had given us lemons yet again, except these were too frozen to squeeze into lemonade. The upper pitch of Debbie's sported a very grabby and semi-breakable (edgeable?) rain crust down to the creek crossing at which point it was a game of following the firm, lumpy groomer over to Sessel and down to the bottom as to avoid the open creeks and bushes, rocks and stumps poking through Lower Debbie's. Not willing to throw in the towel after a single lap, I went back up for another. The upper half of Debbie's had improved with more tracks, but unfortunately most folks had given up by this point so it wouldn't be getting much better. In the interest of science, I took a third lap so that I could "scientifically confirm" the poor conditions - it wasn't good enough to justify staying in the valley so down the road I went to Central.

Calling the coverage at Central "thin" is an exaggeration. There are portions of the lower mountain where the underlying access roads poke through. The flat at the bottom of Central Express is a mud- and gravel-bottomed pond skim. Still, in the interest of science I took three runs and decided that even though Alpine bowl sucked the least, it wasn't worth sticking around for more.

The soup of the day was the catered-in pho in the work cafeteria. I arrived early enough to the office to catch one of the first few bowls of it being served.

tl;dr:

Kind of crazy that they are open for night skiing.

So you're saying it probably isn't worth the drive up to the pass after work this week for a couple hours of night skiing... Bummer.

you never know unless you go... conditions might improve with this week's minor warm-up. But right now I'm looking at off-snow things to do with my weekday evenings... fingers crossed for this weekend.

EDIT: should add that the coverage looked sufficient for fun times at West. Too bad they're not open during the daytime midweek for enjoying the inevitable slush that comes with a 10000' +/- 1000' freezing level

So you're saying it probably isn't worth the drive up to the pass after work this week for a couple hours of night skiing...  Bummer.

Not at all, and I may end be up there weds or thurs night depending on various obligations.

I'm saying it is almost negligent to have the hill open at night (Central & Alpental really- West looked ok) with minimal grooming (too warm) and holes/rocks/ bare patches prominent in the few runs that have been.

I'm saying it is almost negligent to have the hill open at night (Central & Alpental really- West looked ok) with minimal grooming (too warm) and holes/rocks/ bare patches prominent in the few runs that have been.

Probably starting to position themselves for "we were open for X days and Y nights, you had ample opportunities to use your pass" at the end of the year in case the season continues to fizzle.