It’s been a while since my last post - but not due to lack of adventures! Sara and I have been skiing like there’s no tomorrow: 25 days in total this year, almost a month of skiing this season! Sara was a spectacular skier for her age before this season, but seeing her slide down a double black like a pro at the end of this season was a huge rush.
We purchased a ski condo in April of last year, so just in time to completely miss the ski season. At first, we were considering renting it out for the first couple of years - but we decided to keep it and make full use of it once winter hit. Here’s a great picture of our condo from above during one of the rare bluebird days later in the season.
We took a couple of trips up prior to the snow coming in, but we didn’t hit it for real until the snow started falling. The first weekend we did some snow showing - we hiked up (most of the way) to Snow Lake and it was beautiful. Sara’s first time on snowshoes at Alpental was a big success!
but then Summit West opened and we took a drive over to get some turns in that first weekend. It was sort of rain/shoeing on us the whole time, so not ideal conditions but we made due.
The following weekend, once Alpental opened, the real fun started. We would drive up on Friday, stop for groceries in North Bend, and sometimes get a couple of runs of night skiing in right after we arrived - depending on how hungry we were. We generally only did 2-3 runs and headed back to the condo before it got icy.
Saturday and Sunday were basically full day skiing - starting at around 9:30a and ending no earlier than around 3p. Sara loved to play this game called “powder puppy” where she basically just skied in circles around me - like the way a puppy would play. Despite skiing all the time - she loved it so much!
These long days usually ended with Sara looking something like this… And I expect I looked pretty much the same.
Right after we got back to the condo after skiing, it was hot pool time. We have a full size pool, but heated to hot tub temps (~101 deg). We generally spent an hour or so in the pool and then 15 min in the sauna. This is also where we met Mika & Mira - the father/daughter who frequented the hot pool at the same time as us. By the end of the season, we were having dinner at each other’s places & skiing together. We met a handful of friends in the building throughout the season - It ended up being a really amazing perk of spending so much time in this little micro community.
After the hot pool, we would head back to the condo for a fancy dinner - usually involving a stew or pasta or salmon. Sara declared early on that salmon was her favorite - so we ate a lot of salmon. A big salmon filet like the one below, would be completely consumed within about 20 min…
Depending on how we were feeling, we would walk Oakley back over to the base area after dinner and sit by the fire for a while. Maybe have a drink. And watch the night skiers come down the mountain in the dark. Oakley loved to eat snow - so much so that she would start shivering. But she would still eat another bite if offered…
Another fun post-dinner activity was calling Grandma Joan. We got a webcam for the TV and Sara just loved seeing Grandma Joan up on the big screen. She would tell Grandma all about her day, show her some of the artwork that had been created that day, and show her dinner or whatever. It ended up being a really fun alternative to watching a movie (which we also did some nights).
After we had come up 3 or 4 weekends, we started to make some improvements. The first improvement we made was a new couch - Angela was shown a sactional by one of the other owners and she was sold. They pack up into manageably sized boxes and we were able to tote one of these things up to the ski valley over the course of a couple of weekends. This made all the difference in comfort when we got back from the mountain - I slept on it a few nights and it was amazing.
Later in the season, I finally upgraded our sleeping situation from a full sized bed to a queen sized bed and added a bunk bed for Sara. This was also a big improvement, because now I can make breakfast without waking Sara. Sara was also a huge fan of the bunk bed, I basically didn’t see Sara the weekend we put it in - she was always up in her bed reading a book or playing. She informed Mira that we now had a “two story condo” - Haha!!!
The queen size bed takes up basically the entire room, so I got this headboard (with charging cables) and some collapsible shelves so that we could keep our water/phones near the bed - taking the place of nightstands. It worked out really well!
Another really cool part of going up basically every weekend during the season - we got to see very early season all the way through to the late spring skiing (we ended up finishing up a few weeks before the end of the season, but it was still pretty impressive). Just looking out the window of our condo, we saw the snow go from nothing to 15 feet or more in depth - with a few storm dropping 12-18 inches overnight. Some weekends, it really snowed!
As we went through the season, Sara became the little pro skiier! Just looking at her in all her gear, ready to head up the mountain…
Some weekends after the big storms, we skied all the powder - This is a different kind of skiing in the thick “cascade concrete”. It was tough for Sara at first, but she got pretty good at it very quickly.
She was also fearless! She would ski along the top of a cliff and throw herself off or around like it was no big deal. Check out this picture - the little pink figure right above the 10 foot cliff? That’s Sara!
Sara got progressively more confident on the blacks and double blacks as well. At the beginning of the season, I had to ski in front of her and coach her on each turn and by the middle of the season, she would launch into the run before I even got to the edge. I could not be more proud… :)
In late Feb, we took a break from skiing in Alpental and headed to Taos for a week to… do some more skiing. Unfortunately, Taos was having a very light snow year and it was still very bare conditions as I took Sara down some of my favorite runs. We ended up skiing three days in Taos and we skied my favorite run “Loreli” a half dozen times at least. We also got to head to the Bavarian a few times - for both lunch and dinner - and got to spend lots of time in the hot tub and tootling around the cabin.
When we got back from Taos, we got hit with some early spring conditions at Alpental. Blue bird days abounded! The views from the top of Alpental are amazing - I’m always blown away on a clear day to see the lake down below and the cascades unfolding in all directions. I was traveling for work at one point in the season and we flew right over our condo - we are truly in the middle of a winter wonderland.
One day, we were skiing down the international run and we took a slightly different turn through the woods to find a little treasure. There were these signs all over the trees - and we came to find out that these were a tribute to some of the ski patrollers who had spend long periods of time at alpental - some of them as much as 50 years. I looked up a few of them online, most of them were deceased but some of them were still around and one of them I recognized as our neighbor at the condo.
In the early morning, we can hear the ski patrol throwing some explosives to trigger avalanches - it’s quite loud, especially in the international basin, and Oakley is not a fan. But on those same mornings, we occasionally find something like this - I am very grateful that this happened before we started skiing!
The early spring did not last (thankfully) and before we knew it, the storms and snow returned. As we entered March, the drive up to Alpental was bordered by these 15-20 foot high snow walls - it was an incredible sight. Those early March weekends were the best skiing we had all season.
I would be remiss at this point to not talk about Sara’s fascination with icicles. She absolutely loved them - especially when I was able to get close enough to grab a big one and we would try to carry it down to the condo. Most of the time they broke on the way, but we had a small pile going just outside our door on the balcony by the middle of the season. Some of these icicles were huge!
By late March, things started to warm up again. The storms continued, but soon the lightly falling snow turned into big wet flakes, then rain/snow, and finally just rain. Skiing got tough at this point, like trying to ski through yogurt - every turn was a labor. The lift rides were also tough, we got pretty soaked on a few occasions. But we kept on skiing!
Our last weekend skiing was in early April. We didn’t realize it until it was too late, but the first weekend in April everyone dresses up costumes and everyone is just having a hoot of a time. I really love all the fun traditions and activities at Alpental. They have live music most weekends and there is always someone to run into during our apre-ski. Angela is pregnant with our second child (baby Jane) and I think we are going to have a great time at the condo next year with an infant in tow - there will be some skiing, but I think Angela/I are really going to enjoy all these fun traditions and activities when we aren’t able to ski quite as much.
Farewell Alpental - we will see you in all your snowy glory again next year!
