November 13, 2005, Alpental

khayak, Scott O. and I pulled into the Alpental lot in a driving rain with water the color of a strong latte flowing down the road. Tons of cars parked in the various lots; there must have been some sort of employee orientation or patrol training going on.

Two skiers were making halting progress down the final pitch of Sessel as we applied skins and headed up a good skin track. Turns out they were the only other skiers we would see all day.

About 8-12" of fresh well saturated with water, with a harder frozen layer underneath. Above about 4,000 ft. the top layer turned to breakable crust. Quite difficult skinning after the skin track stopped just above the top of chair 1/16, with lots of tip diving.

With the freezing level rapidly rising to about 4,500 ft. and large amounts of snow and rock falling off the cliffs over lower Nash, we stuck to the Edelweiss side and the ridge to Gunmount. Took refuge from the gusty winds in the lift shack at top, which was furnished in low-budget crackhouse splendor (who wouldn't want to be a liftie at Alpental with accomodations like that), had lunch, and skied down.

Skiing was better than we had anticipated, smooth turns with just a bit of hop required at the top, and skiing our skintrack necessary on the flats. No other skiers up on the hill, but we did see Kelvin walking the dog in the lot at the bottom . . . as we de-booted in the pouring rain, we imagined people frolicking in the 2 ft. of pow today at Paradise, but I guess that didn't happen either . . .