Alpine and Glade trails at Summit

Overview

The Alpine and Glade trails connect Summit Ski Area to Timberline. The trails overall are fairly tame, without much to worry about from avalanches or getting lost (though not zero risk!), so perfect for beginners and getting back into things early season. Many folks will take the shuttle up to Timberline from Summit Lot, and take Alpine back down to their car at the end of the day.

2023-12-09: First Alpine trip

Summary

This was my first time touring the Alpine Trail. I got there around 10am, it took me about 2 hours to go from the Summit lot to the Stormin' Norman lift at Timberline, and about 15 minutes down. I was worried about the conditions coming in, but it ended up being a perfect window between the snow storm the day before and the heavy rain coming in the evening into the next day.

Summit wasn't open yet, but there was still a good amount sledding happening. Several other folks were on the trail near me heading up, and there were others coming down after taking the shuttle up from Summit lot to Timberline.

The Pucci lift at Timberline was open, and I was considering skinning up a bit more to cut over to that lift, but folks skiing by said the line was 30min long, so that wasn't worth it.

Coverage was mostly ok, considering. Off the main trail was going over some bushes, but it wasn't that bad and often safer; the main trail had several sections with exposed rocks and one steel cable. Noting the terrain on the way up was very useful.

Tracks

Conditions

~30°F, cloudy, light snow, low wind. Theres 2"-3" of fresh snow plus a few more inches beneath from the previous days. Visibility was pretty good, and low avalanche risk at low elevations.

Report and Lessons

Still some boot work left to go, but nothing major.

My overall pace was decent to start with, 2 hours to go about 1.3k' over 2 miles. But I felt like I was taking a lot of breaks for cardio so the pace was inconsistent, I'll need to work on that. I should probably move a bit slower to stay more consistent.

Getting some basic rub-on skin wax on made a big difference, I actually had some glide. It made everything easier, especially the small downhills. Next time I'm going to apply some better spray wax the night before.

My skis definitely need a tune, I'll get around to it in a week or two, I've got to bring in multiple pairs.

Also, I thought I knew how geotagging worked on my camera, but apparently not. I'll figure that out for next time.