April Showers bring...

Alpental
04.14.06
It’s raining in Seattle when Peter picks me up. I’m glad he’s driving because the driving rains make the visibility on I-90 difficult. Peter mentions that his sister who lives in Utah thinks we are crazy for skiing in this piss poor pissing conditions. We meet up with Tim just after 10:30 at the bottom of the quad lift. It’s teacher ski day, the last weekday of our spring break!

The rains turn to wet snow half way up the quad. So we seek the snow and ride chair 2 to the top. We see boarders cut some slides. Visibility is low: fog and snow. We drop into Edelweiss bowl. We each take turns turning ass over teakettle. The snow is manky, deep, and grabby. I’m riding the skis low and long and it’s tough work.

Second run we head back up chair 2 and go the long way down. This is only my second time ever on Upper International. It’s one year and one day to the day I first descended this route. This time, no pow, but still deep snow. Another tele-skier reminds me to breath. I do. It is not nearly as bad as we all thought, but still tough going. Lower Nash is debris field. Some chunks of snow are taller than my shins. I nail one with my chest. I watch Peter take a power eleven approach and he bails, bounces, and lands back on his skis.

We pull in for lunch and a break. We are soaked. After lunch we wiggle into wet jackets and head back for a few more. We decide to stay low, traverse the cat track a bit and drop into one of the side lines. Snow is fairly good and we make another go. The second time through, I’m doing a beautiful ballet move, right ski so high in the air that when I land, I take the tail of the right ski in my left thigh. A nice ski length scratch and bruise. Time to call it a day. We head to the cars and chuckle at the day!