Jan 10, 2008 Alpenstall

Waited for the pass to open before leaving home. Arrived at alpental around 11am. Skied heavy cascade crud...quickly becoming chopped up mank. Chair 2 never opened. Around 1:30 They closed chair 1 to protect us from the WSDOT blasting on Denny mountain. Of course westbound I-90 had been closed since 11am. So no escape.

Got some nice turns in on Chair 3. Found some special mank stashes under the chair. Got in line for I-90 westbound around 2:45...and woohoo the WSDOT opened the pass at 3:05....Glad they were able to meet their proposed schedule. Glad I remembered I could use my cell phone to get a pass report.

Ahhh, the long awaited return of Cement, the night skiing session went from good on top to OK 1/2 way down to alright sorta someplace in between, Full conditions were in effect I almost forgot how well wet snow sticks to every thing, I'm sure chair 2 was good this AM

Plan was to ski bottomless on C2 all day then head to the Summit to sample skis at Marmots Demo Daze in the evening. (Thank you Marmot and reps!). Nice plan, right???? Reality was: Stuck on I-90 avi control closure, then slop around C1 in mank, getting wetttttttttttttt!!, ever hopeful that C2 would open, (it didn't), then froze in the evening's dumping heavens trying out as many skis as possible til near hypothermia drove me to call it a day. Not complaining but it was a true Snoqualmie Pass epic, just like I remember it from younger days. Sometimes, (rarely), it doesn't pay to be avid.

Also did the ski-by-artificial-light thing. Arrived at 6pm. Snow level was less than 500 ft below the parking lot. Sooo, snow was a little heavy. Found some good stashes over by Igrid's and DOM. By the end of the night I had 2" of cement stuck to the top of my skis.