Thursday, February 23, 2012

Alpental Shredtacular Trifecta (2/18-19, 2/23)

Rode Alpy Saturday, Sunday, and Today (thursday ze 23rd). So many cliff drops and white room incidences that my spine hurts.

Saturday was the sickter. Ran into my friend Garrett and rode pow w/ him and his crew all day. We sessioned the cliff-band in between felsen and snake dance most of the day. IT WAS DORITIOS! There was a foot of fresh when I showed up and by the time I left there was another 10inches of new snow. There was some uphill race going on which meant there were free cliff bars at the base, score! Took about 10 of those white chocolate and macadamia nut ones, so bomb. Also, there was NO ONE there for a Saturday. Check out this liftline:



Wut? Yeah hobviously everyone missed the memo. But everyone and their step-grandma showed up on Sunday. While leaving the pass I got trapped due to avalanche control. It was lame, so I ate a whole bag of sunchips and blasted some Pretty Lights.



Sunday was a very sad/weird day. Got to Alpental at 815 and there was already a huge line. There was a ton of fresh snow but the amount of people there was just insane. Armstrong didn't open till like 945 and I think that made everyone extremely restless.



I got only 5-6 runs by noon so Derrek and myself decided to go ride Hyak and shred their slackcountry. On our way to Hyak there were ambulances and fire trucks everywhere so we knew something bad had just happened. Saw people hiking up to the bottom of ESAD across the street from the condo's but didn't assume that's where the incident took place.

When we got to Hyak I got a call from my girlfriend saying someone had just died at Alpental from falling off of a cliff. FUCK! Such terrible news. It was weird to think we were all in the same liftline that morning, and someone died that was in that liftline. Heavy. While sessioning the slackcountry I got a call from my mom asking if I was at alpental OR stevens, because 3 people had just died at Stevens and 8 were missing. I couldn't believe it. Terrible, terrible, terrible news. Just took is easy for the rest of the day and just rode the mellow bowl just riders right OB at Hyak w/ Derrek.


Thursday aka today was the good! Got 4th chair up chair 1 and lapped the lower terrain till chair 2 opened. They basically didn't groom anything which means I was even getting pow turns at the bottom of the chair. Andrew and I mainly sessioned the cat-track area which was fun as always. Once chair 2 opened we hit the Rollen cliffs which are super small now! Confused. Then rode shot 6 once (cut too far low and ended up in an awesome chute leading into shot 6, super lucky I didn't get cliffed out), and breakover trees till Elevator opened at 140. Here's a pic of that lucky chute I found just riders right of shot 6.



I found out how to ride breakover as far left as possible to come out at the top bind-in area off of armstrong aka I could still make it back to chair 2. Yeeee! So many fun zones through there. With little cliffs and shit.



We finished off the day riding the terrain off of Elevator. We were riding just past snake dance right when they opened Elevator so we could not of timed it more perfectly. Cross only ski patrol tracks up top and it was white room after white room. After that run we had to call it a day because we had to be back to Ellensburg by 3pm.

Good timez

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Alpental Slackcountry Vid + Other Dayz (2/2, 2/4)



From the best day of the season thus far.

In other news, I rode at alpy on February 2nd and it looked like this in the backcountry:



We lapped the upper nash gate all day till about 2pm then went home. It was a solid day in the bc with andrew and brian. Looking at the forecast it will probably be the last powder day for awhile.

On Saturday the 4th I went to White Pass extremely hungover w/ my neighbor alex. Their park was open for the first time this season so pretty much all we did was lap the jump line all day. T'was fun. Then we saved a dogs life on our way home. The dog jumped out of the back of the truck that was in front of us and managed to survive. We put the dog in our car and rallied back to the truck that was infront of us. The poor dog was wimpering and most definitely confused/nervous. Here's a pic of the guy:



You should've saw the look on the guy's face when we returned his dog. We were driving in the passing lane and yelling at him and he thought we were just some dumbass college kids until he realized we had his dog in our car. Dumbass.