April 10, 2004, Slot Couloir

We ascended the phantom after a late start (10 am - due to key loss + forgetting one pair of skis and having to drive back + some puking at Albertsons - this all is a long story). The phantom was nice to go up after an easy detour on the left side of the waterfall and we skinned almost all the way to the top.
We skied down the slot at 1:30 PM, the top part looked good and was in excellent condition, after 20 yards though the snow became really hard and bumpy - not really fun to ski. After that, it became harder and even icy in some sections until we hit the sunny sections on the fan out of the couloir.
In short, I would not recommend skiing the slot in the current condition, it is definitely skiable, but not a good/fun ski right now.
We hiked out over the snow lake approach; we kept a high line as we were traversing out around 4400 feet. We managed to find a snow line on the skiers left between cliffs to ski back down towards Alpental. All in all a great day, Tyler's first slot which he had wanted to do for a long time, great job!
Another party of four tele skier skied down the crooked couloir, but they told us that it was in very hard snow as well.

Here is a picture of Tyler coming down the slot: