March 29, 2005, Alpental
3/29/05
WA Snoqualmie Pass
4612
9
I was looking for a quick workout after a late work night and before Glacier Travel class in the evening, and since the telemetries at Alpental looked as promising as anywhere, I picked the shortest drive (yikes, $2.19 for regular unleaded?). Arrived at Alpental "lot" - a 20' x 100' slot plowed into a mass of frozen snowballs, and backed in as there would be no turning around.
Hit the road with skins on about 10:50 AM, and found two cars, a black pickup and an old GMC "Dirtbag Edition" parked up next to the ArmEx base - obviously employees who kindly enough had set a smooth skintrack up Sessel. Caught up to the three patrollers at the bottom of Chair 2/17, where they were shovelling out the lift platform and trying to start the chair. After several minutes of no success, they asked if I was going to the top, and if so, could I go in the lift shack, open the black box, and pull out the two red buttons? If I did, they said I could ride the lift!
I set out with high hopes, but the skinning in 12-15" of heavy and windblown fresh on top of maybe 20" of rain-saturated snow from the weekend was EXTREMELY laborious. Snow above 4,700 or so was becoming quite slabby, with easy crack propagation while skinning. Dug a pit on E facing aspect @ ~5,120 ft. and found, among other things, tons of snow - at least 50" in Edelweiss Valley, moderate shears at ~8" and ~16", but the new snow well bonded to the layers lower down - seems the rain Sat/Sun did it's job. Ran out of gas about 200' below the top after nearly 3 hours of skinning, and turned around.
If the good news is the huge amount of new snow, the bad news is . . . it's so heavy you can hardly ski through it. I straightlined most of upper Edelweiss, making maybe 10 turns on the entire run, and had to ski in my skin track to make it across the flats. This, I might add, was on Teledaddies!
Near the bottom of Sessel I ran into Ben H. from Pro Guiding as we both struggled to cross a stream - he summed it up pretty well, saying "kinda thick, huh?"
Back in the lot I saw Trevor from the Summit, who was doing a feasibility check re: possibly opening the area on the weekend . . .
No more debris to hit? Does this mean I shouldn't take rock skis tomorrow??
Winter in April. Who woulda thought it? :D ;D
Winter in April. Who woulda thought it? :D ;D
Does this mean I shouldn't take rock skis tomorrow??
Take whatever ones are BLUE, Crackle!
No debris on the hill, but watch out for the freeway - it was mayhem again, kind of a reprise of Saturday (but hopefully without fatalities) - two trucks were in the snowbank at the Alpental exit, had to wait as a State trooper explained to a girl in an El Camino with wide tires that no matter how much gas she gave it, she wasn't going to move forward and that she should put it in reverse and get out of my way . . .
Oh, my, that was incredible. The new snow had settled to the point of no avalanche danger, yet it was powdery enough to insert a ski pole up to the handle with only minimal effort.
After several laps on Sessel, we skied DOM and/or Eisfallen (not sure which) twice. A trip up Debbie's Gold finished the afternoon.
The snow was creamy pow for all but the last run, when it crusted over. I took my TLT4s along for another spin, and was suprised at how aggressively I was skiing them. When the snow crusted over I remembered why I initially thought they sucked, but we had about five hours of pow, pow, and more pow. No rocks to hit, no shrubs to dodge. I even got a chest-shot sensation on one turn. Amazing.
The pit I dug on DOM showed no layers for about three feet, than an irregular rain crust type thing (maybe from Sunday?), and consolidated old snow below. I couldn't get anything resembling a shear on the rain crust, and there is no slab formation so far.
;D
Of course, it'll probably melt away next week.
After several laps on Sessel, we skied DOM and/or Eisfallen (not sure which) twice. A trip up Debbie's Gold finished the afternoon.
The snow was creamy pow for all but the last run, when it crusted over. I took my TLT4s along for another spin, and was suprised at how aggressively I was skiing them. When the snow crusted over I remembered why I initially thought they sucked, but we had about five hours of pow, pow, and more pow. No rocks to hit, no shrubs to dodge. I even got a chest-shot sensation on one turn. Amazing.
The pit I dug on DOM showed no layers for about three feet, than an irregular rain crust type thing (maybe from Sunday?), and consolidated old snow below. I couldn't get anything resembling a shear on the rain crust, and there is no slab formation so far.
;D
Of course, it'll probably melt away next week.
Just got back from some before work turns this morning. The crust is out in full force below 4000 ft, then disappears above on shaded slopes. Parts of Edelweiss had a sun crust. We skied down Nash - good turns in the fluff high up, then bailed onto the one lane groomer on Lower Nash to avoid the crust. Surprisingly good weather - most of the peaks were in and out amongst the clouds and fog.
Matt et al - based on what you saw going on at the hill - did it look like they were prepping C2 to open, and did it look like they'd done any control work on the Intl side? I was up on Intl last Friday before the big snows hit and even then it was deep in the main run but shallow right at the top where it was just a bit windslab and facet base combo, and I wasn't sure how well some of the snow right at the entrance was going to hold whatever more load fell on top of it. As in, I wonder whether if they DID do serious control on Intl whether it would kick a fair sized slide due to buildup of various moderate layers in various depths that have built up during a year with no control there, and make a mess of the run.
I can't say for sure whether they are planning on opening Chair 2, but it did look as though the chair had been running and was used recently. Most of the chairs were cleaned of snow (I think), the exit ramp was shoveled and there were ski tracks going down it.
There was minimal grooming - none above the quad, and only a 'one lane' track from the top of Sessel to the top of Armstrong, and part way up lower International.
We didn't see any evidence of control work in Edelweiss or in International, and surprisingly little evidence of natural slides (it's quite possible slides from this weekend got buried under new snow however). No obvious crowns, but we didn't look very hard. We dug a hasty pit at the top of Edelweiss in a somewhat wind slabbed spot, but away from a sun crust. Moderate scores on compression tests less than 1 ft down (~15). We got blocks deeper to slide with shovel shears, but required a bit of effort. We didn't rigorously test them. If forced to make an evaluation, my hunch would be control work this morning wouldn't have turned up anything big, but that might all change with this storm before the weekend.
Coverage above source lake looked good, from what we could see. The west side of Snoqualmie still looked a little lean, especially lower down (though determined folk could probably pick a way up the Phantom).
There was minimal grooming - none above the quad, and only a 'one lane' track from the top of Sessel to the top of Armstrong, and part way up lower International.
We didn't see any evidence of control work in Edelweiss or in International, and surprisingly little evidence of natural slides (it's quite possible slides from this weekend got buried under new snow however). No obvious crowns, but we didn't look very hard. We dug a hasty pit at the top of Edelweiss in a somewhat wind slabbed spot, but away from a sun crust. Moderate scores on compression tests less than 1 ft down (~15). We got blocks deeper to slide with shovel shears, but required a bit of effort. We didn't rigorously test them. If forced to make an evaluation, my hunch would be control work this morning wouldn't have turned up anything big, but that might all change with this storm before the weekend.
Coverage above source lake looked good, from what we could see. The west side of Snoqualmie still looked a little lean, especially lower down (though determined folk could probably pick a way up the Phantom).
"Chair 2 is looking mighty fine." --Summit Web site today.
I can't imagine it won't be open. See you in line Sat. morning. :D
I can't imagine it won't be open. See you in line Sat. morning. :D
Glad to hear they got the chair running - as far as grooming goes, I think they're counting on powder-crazed skiers to pack it down . . .
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