5-15 Alpental and Summit West

It's May 15th, and there's still snow!!

Drew Hurter and I decided to check out what snow was left at the Summit at Snoqualmie, which was a lot.

Photos by Drew Hurter and William Richmond (me).

Not looking promising from the highway.

Summit West

Not seeing much snow at West, we decided to ski the park later and go to Alpental.

There's still snowbanks.

Lots of snow and cars for May 15th.

Starting the ascent.

Lots of possible lines about a third of the way up Armstrong.

Drew hiking our long bootpack. No skins or AT-bindings.

Our choices.

After a bit more hiking, I skied down some excellent corn. Very fun skiing. At that point, we took a lunch break, and then made the push to the Armstrong chair.

On the way we made a small kicker.

The view from the start.

I sent it.

The chair was only 50 feet above the jump, so we made it up, and sat on one of the chairs, and a nice man took our photo.

It was way to hot to put on the jacket.

The excellent skiing down.

Drew coming down.

A small cliff that was pretty fun to hit.

I sent the thing.

From there we continued to ski down excellent corn to the base, and went back to West, to hit a jump or two. Unfortunately several stoners had already congregated there, so the park session was cut short. However, the were some fun hits.

This gap was really fun to circle around. I tried to hit it with speed, and do it from the bottom up, but I couldn't get enough speed.

Drew sessioned the rail.

Overall an amazing day!

Hopefully there will still be more snow for some later May sessions.