Alpental March 9, 2014

The reports for Saturday were not favorable a lot of one run and done reports (frozen and rutted). As one patroller put it some of the skiing is bad, the rest is worse. Went to the Sounders game instead. It was wet but the beer was good without frozen mank.

Headed up in the afternoon and hit chair 2 at about 1:00 pm. The rain had diminished to off and on mist. Took multiple runs down Edelweiss side. All runs including The Fan were very enjoyable. The frozen muck from yesterday had softened into spring like conditions.

International was exceptional later in the day as the visibility improved. Left side of I to Lower Adrenalin was smooth and creamy. The middle of Lower I between the Avy debris was great. Fast skiing with few bumps. 3 hours and 12,000 + vertical. This was a 7+day. Broke the streak of 4 weeks in a row on the Pontoon's but skiing was very good.

Yesterday was like that- the skiing was bad, the rest was worse. Actually, it wasn't all that bad. Upper I and Adrenaline were passable, as smoother with sections of corn sluff. Picking through the frozen chunder on upper-mid-lower internations (you see how I did that) was interesting.  Took 2 runs on 1, for some unimaginable reason, on a big demo day chair 1 wasn't even groomed top-to-bottom. Total head scratcher there.  4 runs on international saw each run better than the last, until the rain started at 11:20, but still snowing on top. I can see how the conditions would have been setting up for some very nice Spring-like conditions after a bit of rain.
No reason to ski the front side of 2 on Sat.
Just for grins, dug a 6-7 foot deep pit at about 4300-4400' Lots of layers in the top 60-70 cm, a pretty hard layer at 220 CM and 260 CM. A total snowpack of 4.5M where I dug.

the grooming done at alpental is a courtesy not a mandatory.
b