Feb 19, 2014 Alpental with hyak warm up laps

I was worried that the pass would be closed again, right at the normal time for driving up. So I headed up early for a warm up lap at hyak. There was a snowboard downtrack so setting the ski track didn't take too much effort, albeit a little steep. Good enough for a second lap which foolishly had me hitting alpental at 10ish instead of 9ish. Doh.

I heard that Chair 2 opened at 9:20. It of course was mainly skied out by the time I hit it. The lift line was surprisingly short at about 10 minutes, with no line at all by 1pm, when the elevator gate opened.

I was able to find plenty of stashes and skiing was quite fun all day long. There is a bottomless quality to the snowpack right now. I had to keep one ski on whilst transitioning and my poles didn't hit anything solid when skinning up.