When will the pineapple end?

After temperatures near zero New Year's weekend, we've had three straight weeks of warm weather and rain in the mountains. Today I dropped Ava for her ski lesson at Summit West in the rain, then drove over to Alpental to check out the conditions there. Luckily it was snowing at the top of Debbie's Gold, about 4300 feet. Then up chair 2 where it was snowing hard, although a bit heavy. No lift lines though so I got a bunch of runs in and thoroughly enjoyed it.

It's supposed to cool off a bit tomorrow but then the snow shuts off for the next several days. My optimism for Feb and March are still in tact, but man, we need some cold weather!

Whistler

While the recent pineapple express delivered warm weather and rain to all the ski areas in Washington, I was excited to see Whistler was still getting snow at the top. We planned a last-minute trip and were not disappointed. I started out Saturday morning simply hoping for the best; the tops of both mountains had been closed the day before. As I exited the top of the Excelerator chair at Blackcomb they opened the Glacier Express chair - for the first time in two days. A few great runs there and then they opened Spanky's Ladder, which allows you to access my favorite run - Ruby Bowl. Ruby was in fine shape so I hit that for the rest of the morning. I spent the afternoon skiing with the family and enjoying the fabulous Westin.

Sunday was not as good- with rain at times nearly to the top of the mountain. We made the most of it though and skied a full day under mostly cloudy skies and wind. All in all we salvaged what would have been a very boring weekend in Seattle.