Nov. 18, 2009 Alpental



Well, a beautiful fall turned into a cold and wet winter. A little ahead of schedule, the Pacific Northwest has begun to accumulate snowfall. I got my first lift served turns at Crystal on Friday the 14th. Good early season 28 degree powder around the Green Valley area. But since this website is dedicated primarily to human powered turns, I will call this Day 1! With fresh snow overnight and stable avalanche conditions, this turned out to be a nice start to the season. Our late 10:00 start, gave three people the chance to break in a easy skin track straight up to the top of International. With minimal effort, Don Hecker and I cruised to the top lift shack. Despite the funky liftshack smell, we enjoyed a quick break then headed down for some excellent turns. We bumped into Frank at the bottom of Lower International, and raced him to the bottom. Nice start to the season, looking forward to many more good days.


Don heading up into Lower International


Freefalling

2 comments:

Kevin said...

I had a comment from someone at MBS that dissappeared. Anyhow, he was asking about using ski areas before they open. This issue is on turns-all-year.com Most areas allow pre-season skiing. However, Alpental is warning of Avy control starting, and prefer not to see anyone in their slide paths. As noted on TAY, Hyak has no operable lifts this year and is a good place to start. When I do ski Alpental, I definitely do not try to avoid the ski patrol. If they are going to throw bombs, I would like them to know I am out there.

Kevin said...

Hey Victor, feel free to shoot me your email if you want more info on touring up at Snoq. Pass. Not sure where your comment went too. Whoops. Anyhow all comments are moderated, before being posted, so if you want to send me an email address via comments, I will make sure to not post it publicly. Kevin