Alpental this side of SnakeDance

Soft n Fun Nash to Lower, ski on ski off with great parking.

Very nice to have our own private ski area on a Saturday with sun and pretty fast spring conditions on anything that was either groomed or fairly well skied already. Though by showing up at almost noon we did have to walk nearly 30 years across lot 4 from our patch of high-and-dry parking ground to get to where we could put skis on.
Having full sun for the better part of the afternoon before the next trough moved in was a happy surprise bonus!

As we got ready we watched folks skinning away from the upper lot, into the warm afternoon and hoped they'd avoid loose wet slides up the valley. There also appeared to be a fresh uptrack on the lower phantom. I love touring but yesterday just seemed like a much better day to be on the lifts or at least away from big slide paths...

I love touring but yesterday just seemed like a much better day to be on the lifts or at least away from big slide paths...

If you saw what happened last night on the lower mountain cat track you might be consider avoiding both. However, it was after a lot of rain and a TON of wind.

Well, yeah, I've seen the debris across the cat track more than once in the past. And there was that debris field on the edge of Upper-I on Saturday. But of course I've also seen the cat track closed on days when the cliffs above were actively dropping snow. I didn't feel very much at risk on the groomed or heavily skied terrain on Saturday, but touring up or across a side path with a more wild snowpack just didn't strike me as the best move possible for the day.