Snowrider Clean Up Success!

No one said it was going to be easy, and it wasn't.  Not by a long shot.  Today I volunteered with the Seattle Chapter of the Surfriders for their all-mountain clean up event at The Summit.  This past season I basically "discovered" Alpental for myself, and then spent 5 months there from December until April tearing it up.

I never actually dropped any trash or equipment, but after having a season pass for 6 years, I thought I'd better help clean up the mountain for some karma points.

I decided to immediately head up the mountain and pick up trash along the path of Armstrong Express chair...seen in the picture to the right.  This was much more daunting than I imagined it was going to be.  First of all there's no real "path" to follow under the chair at all, so you have to sort of meander along the cable lines looking for spots to hike and stay relatively centered under the chair in order pick up any cans, bottles, lift tickets, broken equipment etc. that is typically the left over debris from a ski season under the lifts.

The underbrush is very thick and rugged, and was very difficult to navigate.  There are a lot of places where you can lose your footing and slip into deeper underbrush, and it really was a lot more effort than I anticipated.

Here's a picture looking down the slope next to Armstrong Express chair where I started to have to veer off a bit from the chair path due to a very fast running stream and series of short waterfalls along the path.

If you ski Alpental, you know this area well, as you pass over it on the chair and look down to see hints of rushing water under deep snow.

I continued up as far as I could considering that I had two trash bags with me.  What I didn't anticipate was that the thick underbrush would of course start to tear apart my bag, so I double-bagged it to prevent it from completely being unusable.

My original goal was to clean up trash all the way to the top of Armstrong Express, then double back down and head down towards Sessel.  This whole plan changed as my trash bag started filling up more and more to the point where it was nearly unmanageable.

The problem I ran into with my goal of reaching the top of the chairlift was simple...my garbage bag became almost too heavy to carry back down the mountain.  I had not anticipated finding so much trash that I might not even be able to carry it off the mountain.  I guess I figured that I would only find a few beer cans and that would be it.

Lesson learned!  When we are all skiing up there it's so easy to enjoy the beautiful snow without realizing that there really is a lot of trash that gets hidden away over the winter and doesn't emerge until later.

Here's the path I hiked today picking up as much trash as I could at Alpental:

Screenshot Credit:  Google Earth

Here's the elevation profile from this route:

Screenshot Credit:  Geocontext-Profiler

All I can say is that all of the volunteers today were awesome!  Everyone picked up a lot of residual trash from a great ski season.  Whenever you are skiing or snowboarding up there, please be aware that any trash you toss off a chair, or along the slopes has to eventually be picked up by hand by an amazing group of volunteers that literally take it to the extreme to help keep the slopes beautiful for everyone.

12th Annual All-Mountain Clean Up

Photo Credit: The Summit

I'll have to admit that I've not yet participated in this event yet, even though I'm on my 6th season pass up at the Summit.  It's time to head up and help keep our playground pristine!

I read about this on the Summit's website, and thought it would be a great chance to give something back to Mother Nature for another great year of skiing.  May she bless us all with major pow next season.  :-)

The Seattle Chapter of Surfrider is providing the BBQ at Alpental and definitely deserve a shout-out for supporting something as seemingly daunting as cleaning up an entire ski area.

According to the announcement, trash bags and gloves will be provided, and one is instructed to "BYOB."  I hope they know what this means to us skiers/boarders!

See you up at the Summit to keep our mountains clean.  Let's do this!

Ski Season Summary

I thought it would be interesting to try to visualize all of the ski data I have logged from time to time throughout the last three ski seasons here in WA.  I created a database using Bento on my iPhone in order to quickly capture several attributes about the conditions, weather, etc.  This data sample does not include every ski trip I've taken in the last three years.

This basic pie chart shows that I mainly split my time between Summit Central during both the day and night, as well as Alpental and Crystal Mt. I usually don't have a chance to hit Blackcomb or Baker as much as I'd like to.

Here is a visualization showing the most common weather I've encountered over the last three ski seasons at the various ski areas.  This suggests that I mostly skied under clear skies, followed by skiing while it was snowing, with the lower number of days skied under cloudy or foggy conditions.  It appears as though I have the best weather while night skiing at Summit Central, and usually seem to hit more fog over at Crystal for some reason compared to the other ski areas.

This next chart shows that the most common snow condition over the last three years for me has been packed powder, followed by icy conditions, believe it or not.  I did have more powder days than "average" days, where the snow condition wasn't bad, but wasn't that great either.  This is followed by dust on crust and of course spring snow, where I usually call it a season.

Notice that this sort of coincides with the above chart in terms of my enjoyment of Summit Central at night because while I had the most clear conditions, it appears as though I also had the most number of icy conditions at night under the stars, which makes sense...Sun goes down and it gets cold...snow firms up.

This next chart shows a summary of the number of skip trips I took over the last three years (of those I remembered to capture data on) and illustrates a few things.  First this shows that I started the 2011/12 season earlier than the 2012/13 season.

This chart also shows that compared to last year, I spent more time at Alpental later in the season as compared to Summit Central at night last season.  This is because I just recently started spending a lot more time at Alpental and therefore my time over at Summit Central is going down.

Also notice that as I'm up at Summit West generally only at the very start of the ski season because Summit West is typically the first area to open, and I'm always eager to hit the slopes as early as possible, but as the season gets under way, I usually don't revisit Summit West throughout the season.

Thanks Summit for an Awesome Season!

Keep your tips up!

Well, I ended up skiing so much that I didn't have quite enough time to update my website as often as I planned. Over the summer there will be a lot of new content added to this site, and of course the live snow condition updates will stay updated on Twitter the second the first flakes hit the ground.

This year was the best ever with the most powder days I can remember! Thanks Summit for all your hard work in keeping us safe up on the slopes.

One of the highlights this year was being able to meet Glen Plake in person!  He was gracious enough to sign my helmet and a poster for me.

I've been a fan of his as long as I can remember, and it was absolutely awesome that the Summit invited him up to Summit West.  Here are pictures of my helmet and poster.  Your the best Glen!

Best iPhone App: Ski Tracks

Note:  This review was before the Summit released their own app which is awesome! Stay tuned for a review of the new Summit App.

Hands down the best skiing app for the iPhone has to be Ski Tracks - GPS Track Recorder by Core Coders Ltd.  There are too many reasons why this app is awesome so I'll start with a quick feature list from the Core Coders' website:

• Does not require data
• Does not require a phone signal
• Runs in background
• Up to 14 hours of recording
• Run-by-run analysis
• Comprehensive stats

The list goes on and on.  I tested this app for the first time at Crystal Mt. and have to say that it completely exceeded my expectations on every possible way.  I did exactly what the instructions said to do...turn on the app, put my iPhone back in my pocket, and hit the slopes!



At the end of my first run, I pulled out my iPhone to see what the app did, and I was blown away.  Right there on one screen was my top speed, the distance I skied, how many vertical feet I just skied, my max altitude, slope and duration of the run.  I couldn't believe that this much data was just gathered on a run!

There are plenty of screens to flip through as well to see even more details and stats.  Here's another screen where you can compare altitude vs your speed for the whole day.

I can't find any faults with this app at all.  You can add photos of your runs to it, and even upload your whole ski day to Google Earth and actually replay your ski runs.  I tested this myself after I got back home and it works perfectly.

For $0.99 you are getting an enormous amount of data to enjoy post-run, post-day, and even post-season.

Trying to break your own speed records?  This is the perfect app because it will show your max speed after each run...did you squeeze out that extra tenth of a MPH?  If not, maybe one less turn before bombing that run?  This app will let you push yourself to the limits, or you can just use it to impress your friends at the lodge over a beer.

The developers were spot on regarding battery conservation too.  My battery did not take a major hit at all after running nonstop all day up on the mountain.

For you snowboarders out there, the app can be toggled between skiers and boarders for that extra level of customization, so it's perfect for anyone on the mountain who is serious about their time on the snow and want to track what they did.

Next up, I will be taking this app up to Snoqualmie Pass and putting it to the test for the rest of the season for sure, both day and night skiing.

A huge thanks goes to the people at Core Coders for this awesome app!