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Skiing has gotten more popular over the last 12 years. This translates to more people on the hill, bigger lift lines, more traffic, longer waits, etc. Those of us who ride Alpental have seen this happen first hand over the last few years. I’ve only been riding since 96/97 and i’ve seen the lines grow in that time. Most of the people i ride with have been around for way longer and could second this.

The Summit at Snoqualmie submitted a Master Development Plan (MDP) to the US Forest Service (USFS) in Dec 2005. The Alpental part of that plan has a few improvements that aim to improve skier circulation.

A ski area’s capacity is largely dictated by it’s parking capacity. Essentially, when the parking maxes out, the amount of people on the hill is also maxed out. When parking is full ski area operators either have to turn people around or shuttle them in which is a slow trickle compare to cars coming in. On the busiest weekends at Alpental, the parking lots are completely full. Therefor we are currently seeing Alpental about as full of people as we’re going to see. The MDP does have a small amount of proposed increased parking capacity, but relative to the amount of cars that are currently parked there it is negligible.

Currently there is one way to the top of the mountain–Armstrong Express to Chair 2. Weekend lift lines at these chairs take a good 30 mins. With one route to the top of the mountain, there is pretty much zero skier circulation here. The MDP proposes to add a new route up the mountain. The existing Sessel lift would be extended up hill roughly to the bottom of where the old Poma lift was or about where Snake Dance pops out. At that location a new chair would be installed that would go up to roughly where Knoll 0 is.

There’s been a lot of concern about putting this lift so close to the backcountry–avalanche danger, snow getting tracked out too fast. I think those concerns can be addressed through effective management of avalanche control work, back country gates, back country gear requirements, etc.

A second route up to the top of Alpental will greatly improve skier circulation. It’s need outweighs the concerns for the backcountry getting tracked out too quick and avalanche concerns.

This project is still under review by the USFS. The Record of Descision (ROD) is slated to be signed sometime this summer. When the Summit at Snoqualmie begins to implement any of this MDP is up in the air–hopefully soon, the lift lines are outta control.

Here’s a link to the MDP EIS on the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie Forest Service website: LINK

Here’s a couple JPG versions of the maps for the project. You can download better quality PDF versions of the same maps (Figures) on the link above.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 8th, 2008 at 4:57 pm and is filed under Snow. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.