January 18, Alpental

Very fun day on Alpental. 4" new at top. rather warm at the base. no crowd what so ever. all upper mountain had nice soft and fun snow. only hitch of the day was the patrol stopping the chairs to load 3 lazy-boys to take up to the top of c-2. but all said and done, I'd say it was the funnest day of the season, so far.

Yeah good up top but super manky down low in the trees. When is the BC gonna open?

This is my first post, I would like to thank all those before me, what a great resource ! I guess you guys were the other couple dozen people up there ! <br><br>International was nice and soft on top as well as the entire upper mountain. Elevator shaft which was nice for the first few hundred yards, then got a little mushy down low. Lots of small powder stashes to be found all around. All in all one nice day.<br><br>- George

1/18/06 - Too snainy/foggy at the Summit West exit, so headed over to Alpental for some riding under the lights from 7:15 to 9:15 where the precip was pure snow, temp was 34F, & the fog wasn't nearly as bad. Hit the little St Bernard chair and found a sneaky 30-40 meter line against the rope where I was able to farm a dozen sets of parallel first tracks. . Snow was pretty soft mashed taters on the bottom pitch above Armstrong loading, but a nice even consistancy higher up made for nice runs down Eisfallen & Dom. Off-piste was a raincrust over soft and wet. Over a hundred racers on the course cleared the lifts out making for ski-right-on chair rides with many empties. Sorry - no snow measurments this trip. TomK on 2 planks.

1/19/06 - Up to Alpental for some runs under the lights from 7:15 to 9:45. Colder (32) than yesterday and no fog. Snowing. 35 inches of soft (but not fluff) based on a pole-push test at the top of Armstrong chair, but firmer where it's been tracked. One or two scraped-out turns found in very high traffic spots, but mostly it was nice and easy, even in the bumps. Lots of good lines found in Ingrids, and in the whole Eisfallen/Dom bowls & ridges. Kepp an eye out for a couple of creek holes back in there though. No first-track turns found due to the day skiers, but we didn&#8217;t get very far off the runs. Liftlines were basicly non-existant as lots of folks were on the racecourse. TomK, Kerry, Eric (first day this season after only one last year - Alpy at his request! - 8 Armstrong rides) and Chad.<br>