Rode day sesh at Alpine Valley on MLK day here’s the scoop on what’s set up and what looks to be coming soon. Sorry no pictures but enjoy the mini park edit from Alpine’s crew.
Conditions: low-30s on arrival warming up to near 40 by mid-afternoon. Partly cloudy sun-softened manmade snow on top of skating rink ice but still pretty ridable on account of the softness. There were a few spots of “ice cubes” that you just had to loosen up and GTFO quick, but otherwise the slopes were in pretty good condition.
Mini-park: The Mini-park was in full effect. Up top they got an 8ft ride-on flat bar and an 8ft barely-ollie-on flat box. This leads down to a 6″ wide rainbow rail that dumps you right in line for a longer flat box maybe a 16-footer (ride-on) or you can veer right and hit the barrel tap. Alternatively you can hit this from the other side if you traverse from the other trails.
Below these there is one more flat box (ride-on) about a 20-footer which was pretty smooth.
At the very bottom was a small kicker with a relatively icy lip but a surprisingly soft landing. Snow today was soft and slushy and I saw a lot of knuckling even though this wasn’t a very big jump, it is relatively steep and I think people were just scrubbing too much speed on the approach (happened to me a few times).
The big park: The southernmost side of the ski area where they normally have the “big” park set up looked pretty much primed, like they had done a ton of snowmaking and were prepping everything. It was obvious there was enough snow and they had already been pushing it around to set up the larger features. Word on the street is they start shaping Tuesday, January 17 (weather permitting).
Pray for some snow and some better weather and before long hopefully we’ll be able to ride the big side of the park, and maybe if we’re really lucky they can open the mini pipe.
