November 25, 2003, Alpental

Went up to the Alp yesterday for a short tour with Ben Kaufman.  Probably at least 2+ feet new since I was there last Thurs.  Snow was very deep and unconsolidated, and was piling up fast as it seemed to dump the whole time.  There were definate signs of slab instability, and we saw a small fracture line in a gully.  My skins badly need to be cleaned and possibly re-glued, and eventually they became useless so we turned around in the trees in the lower shot 6 area.  Terrain that seemed safe was also kind of difficult to keep moving in, but it was still fun to make slo-mo pow turns on the not-so-steep.  Near the bottom there was one short pitch under the chair that allowed a few "normal" (not leaned back all the way on the tails) turns.  Sure is nice to see it dump like that though!