Alpental Backcountry

At 1pm, I took a furtive look out the window and saw the sun shining. I shut off the computer and quickly raced back to my cabin to gather my gear. Alpental was calling my name. I knew it was not going to be good; there was only 12” of snow on the ground. But for my sanity, I needed to get out.

I made my way up the Alpental backcountry exit route, picking my way past streams, rocks and twigs. A couple times, I had to head back down to the valley floor, after encountering open ravines running with water. Finally, I made it past mushroom and sucker chute and things began to get a little easier.

As I wrapped around toward Source Lake, I decided head up and around. The going was easy compared to earlier and I found more snow as I hit the north-facing slope of Big Trees. A meandering across the slope, I settled on a hundred yard swath of open snow and de-skinned.

The ski down was good, at least compared to what I thought I would get. There was about 8” of snow on top of a solid crust. Every turn, I hit the crust, but there was enough fluff to provide a cushion. After linking 10 turns, I headed over to another patch of open snow and made another 15 turns before entering the trees.

The journey back was faster, although still treacherous. All in all, I am glad I got out. It is the end of December, and this was only my third time on skis this season…