Monkey

I went to Alpental today with Simon. Yes, today… May 17th. We’ve had an especially cool Spring and all the extra snow we had this winter has remained up there. Coverage at the area was amazing for this time of year. There were some bare patches starting to form, but really only where snow has trouble accumulating during the season, or in places where it seems it had been groomed a little thin. The snow banks in the parking lots are still above the cars.

It was amazingly warm up there today. It hit 70 at the top, with an inversion making it cooler at the base. It felt much, much warmer than that standing in the sun. We slathered ourselves in sunscreen and wore a little as possible. The snow was melting fast, but it didn’t matter since there was so much of it up there. There were a lot of places where the snow lower on the slope is pulling away from the snow higher up, forming fissures that in some cases were quite deep (over 10ft). Sometimes you could see them from above… other times, well, you had to hop quickly.

Overall, a fantastic day of Spring riding.

Alright, I’ve enjoyed this too much not to share it: http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/Pork

Helen and I started planning our trip for next winter. We’re thinking of snowboarding in Utah, probably around Park City since we’ve already done Snowbird and surrounding areas. Then we’ll head to CO for some more riding, then take the 50 all the way to Squaw Valley, stopping along the way for ample picture taking opportunities for Helen. After that, we’ll head for Mt. Bachelor, OR, and then home. Here’s a picture of a potential route. We’ll flesh out the details over the summer, and see if we end up with a trailer for this trip or not!

For info on our last big winter trip in 2006, see this post.

We watched Primer again recently. We saw it a while ago, probably shortly after it first came out in 2004, and I’ve remembered it off and on since then, so I decided to put it back on the Netflix queue. I had believed that watching it again I would understand it fully beginning to end, and I thought I was doing well until the last 5 min or so, when I lost it. Argh! It’s a complicated movie, presented somewhat out of order and they try to close up all the gaps with a series of flashbacks at the end. It comes out a smidge confusing, but it’s a good movie. I like a few things about it: their take on time travel, and the portrayal of the process of inventing the device. It’s that process of invention that I like about The World’s Fastest Indian, too.

At any rate, I highly recommend Primer. After you watch it you’ll probably be confused, but that’s okay. There is a fantastic graphic that illustrates the various timelines in the movie, who goes where when, and what the up-shot is. This entire graphic is one big spoiler, so don’t follow the link until you’ve watched the movie: http://neuwanstein.freeweb.hu/primer_timeline.html. I think the graphic is accurate in every aspect of the movie that is fact. I think it’s a bit off in one or two places where they had to speculate, because some parts of the movie are indefinite, but the ways in which it is off aren’t that big of a deal.

I went up to Alpental this morning with Dana, a friend from work. It was a beautiful sunny day, and the snow softened up into perfect spring corn. There is still an amazing amount of snow up there. The snow banks in the parking lots are still above the cars, and coverage on the mountain still feels like the height of the season. We rode from around 9:30 until almost 1 then called it a day. The place was packed with people… all of the lots filled up by the time we left, and the lift lines were long. But, the turnout was a good thing… looks like they will open up next weekend, too!!

Finally, it really must be said: the chick loading Chair 2 today was looking especially fine. Ah, Spring…