March 15, 2014, Alpental and Hyak

Great lonely corduroy skiing off chair 1 between 830-1000, then the ski school arrived to make it more real.  We did one run off c2 and did not find the 6" of powder that I thought the telemetry showed from the past 36hours, oh well.   Then we went to East (formerly Hyak) and skied an hour of similar conditions with no lift lines, followed by a burger with greasy fries, not as good as Silver Fir's offerings Thursday.  Bored with icy groomers, we took a skin lap up, the sun came out partly and made the slope much softer.  My first visit to East lodge this year, definitely a time travel to the past, awesome retro clothing and gear.  Want your kids to love lift skiing?  Make them ski XC for a year or two!

Hope someone will post story and pics for the freestyle comp today at Alpental. Only thing I have heard so far is Quincy WON!

We sat in Hyak's first chair at 0900, but almost no one else was there that early. Overcast sky, but the cloud deck was above the hills, so no fogginess was found. Snow was pretty firm for the first 2 hours, but carvable on the trails so that's where we spent the day. It started softening up slowly and by noon it was beginning to slushify on the come-back trail and below the beer can. Saw Hyak Jack and a couple of other folks on sno-bikes so we zipped Kendal for a couple of fun runs. Finished my day off at 1230 with a surprisingly smooth one down NoName untracked and the out the still crusty wagon trail to Rampart/Creek.

FYI - The word on the hill is that next weekend, March 22/23 will be the last bit of Hyak ops (including Nordic) for this winter.