Alpental, one of the two distinct mountains that make up Summit at Snoqualmie, has announced plans to close a few weekends early in order to make extra time for the replacement of the Edelweiss chairlift with a new Doppelmayr triple.
According to a statement made on the area’s social media, the area must remove the old lift and install the new one in a single summer, navigating the lack of road access along the construction site. Because of the tight timeline, the final fay of the season at Alpental will be on Sunday, April 13.
Despite Edelweiss sitting at the top of the area, the entire mountain has to be closed as avalanche control work for the lower portion of the mountain relies on access to the top of the soon-to-be-replaced chairlift. As the existing lift needs to start being removed by April 14th, the avalanche control work for normal operations will end that day as well.
The last day for skiing at Summit at Snoqualmie, as of now, will be at Summit Central on April 20. Read the full statement from Alpental below:
This summer we’re embarking on the third major chairlift project at Alpental, replacing Edelweiss with a new Doppelmayr triple chairlift. It’s an exciting one, but this project has an even more challenging timeline than the Internationale Chair because we must remove the old lift and install the new one in a single summer. To make things even more difficult, no part of the construction site has road access – whereas on the Internationale project we were able to get a temporary construction road to the base of the lift.
That tight timeline dictates the need to close Alpental a couple weekends earlier than average. The final day of the season will be Sunday, April 13th, that way our team has enough time to remove the existing lift while there’s still suitable snow conditions to get towers and large components off the mountain. Without roads, the best way to get all these components off the mountain is to do it over the snow. Once the mountain closes our team will be working on the project daily, but we must also consider that we might lose multiple days of the removal process due to spring storms that hamper the team’s ability to get things done.
You might be wondering, why can’t we just run lower-mountain and Internationale? The avalanche control work that allows almost all of lower-mountain to safely operate relies on access to the top of Edelweiss. Since we have to start removing the existing lift on April 14th, avalanche control work for normal ski operations has to end that day as well.
While we would love to keep Alpental open later, and know everyone loves late spring days at Alpy, it just isn’t possible without seriously jeopardizing the timeline of this massively important project. We do not have any major Alpental projects slated for next year, so we’re looking forward to having this amazing new lift and the potential of getting back to normal spring operations. Thanks for your understanding, and be sure to take advantage of every spring day we have on the calendar!
