I'm serious.

I'm sitting here typing, and it's taking me twice as long because I hurt my thumb. I also look like a complete retard because I have this big, red mark with a gouge in the middle in the middle of my forehead.


Alpine Valley has ben the shi*ttiest resort I have ever been to, and here's why.

1. All of the runs are like green circles/beginner, or maybe like blue squares/intermediate.

Seriously. I'm an intermediate boarder when it comes to Cascade, Chestnut, etcetc, but when I got to Alpine, I rode down the black diamond about 5 times before deeming it stupid. It's not hard at all. In fact, I saw 5 year olds going down it. I actually went more on the beginner hills because they had more turns and such that were interesting. Oh, and the runs are SHORT. And I'm talking short.

2. The cafeteria area/food area is mediocre.

I usually don't care what the food/cafeteria area looks like, but it's at least nice to have it set up so that it's enjoyable. At Alpine, it was like a school cafeteria, just everything was dark. The only lighted places were where you ordered your food. And the food was something I could order at a baseball game. Corndogs, nachos ... Though I do have to agree, the nachos were good. And their hot chocolate was like a Starbucks Chantico, god damn that thing was thick. Oh well. At least it was hot. But they should use some of that money on buying some new tables and chairs for the cafeteria.

And finally, which is what pissed me off the most ...

3.THEY DO A CRAPPY JOB OF GROOMING THEIR RUNS.

I am DEAD serious. I have never been to a resort where their runs were so crappy, other than Wilmot. But still, at least Wilmots was all ice. Alpine had a mix of pow/ice. No inbetween. So you're either going through pow and going REALLY slow, or you're going over chunks of ice/a sheet of ice and booking it down the run unintentionally.

Also, they keep their pow machines on 24/7. Or at least they did when I went there. I didn't mind so much when I put my goggles on, but it still impaired my vision, and being a snowboarder, you know how much your vision is needed. Plus, I needed to see where the ice and pow started and ended. That's where my first injury occured.

I was going down the beginner run, and the first part of it is ICE. Just ice, because the pow couldn't get up there. Then going down to the second part, it was pow, and ... well. I slowed down a lot. Then I started going down, and the pow machines .... Yeah. There they were. So I slid on my goggles super fast, and went down, but OH HO look! A valley of ice chunks and ice that I didn't see! So as I go over them, I picked up a LOT of speed because I couldn't turn as well, so I ended up trying to toeside stop. I did, for the most part, but as I was going in to that action, I put my left hand down for some drag, but since I was going so fast and it was ICE not snow, I clipped my thumb.

I swear to god I have never been in so much pain in my life. I thought I broke it right then and there at the base of my thumb, but I continued on down and just sat down. I think it's just sprained, but it still hurts like a mother f*cker.

SECOND.

I was going down an intermediate course (after going down the black diamonds). The course lead in to the terrain park, so naturally, that's where all the teens were and such. Any way, as I'm going down, I'm turning to my right and ZZZZZIP - This GUY is going straight and in my path! So I'm like, WATCH OUT. But he doesn't, he just keeps going and I clip the end of his board. He stumbles a bit but keeps going, without even caring to see if I was all right. But all the while, I had heel-side stopped so suddenly, then I caught a rough patch of ice, and my momentum flung me forwards in to a nice face plant in to some jagged ice. Of COURSE, I had to hit the ice ... Not the pow. But if the run was all pow, we wouldn't have had that happen.

Now, I'm going down the rest of the hill, kind of in a daze because I just got up really fast from that fall. Basically a fall, roll, and getup maneuver, but it still dizzied me a bit. So I reach my friends and they're like, what happened? So I told them the story, and after ranting about how they were going to go 'kick the shi*t' out of the guy who did that to me, one of my friends was like ... "Hey! Michelle, you're head is bleeding."

And so they laughed. I kind of laughed too because I didn't feel it and thought they were joking, but lo and behold. I took my hat off, and supposedly my forehead was BLOODY. Ew. So I wiped my hand across from forehead, and upon seeing the blood on my fingertips, immediately announced that it was lunch time.

They agreed. So I went to the bathroom, and tried to wipe off all the blood. And I did! But what happened, is that not only did a sharp piece of ice gounge out an itty bitty piece of my forehead, but I also got this massive ice burn around it. So now I have this huge, pink/red circle around the gouge.

And it looks horrible.



Now, I'm a good snowboarder. I rarely wipe out any more. In fact, when I went to Chestnut for a couple days, I didn't wipe out once. But at Alpine, the conditions were so shi*tty, that ... Well. There you go. Even your good snowboarders are in danger of getting hurt. And I'm the perfect example.

So don't go to Alpine unless you want to be severely disappointed by the runs, grooming, and overall general feeling of the place. I'd spend the time going more up north and hitting up Chestnut, Cascade or Devil's Head. But please, for all snowboaders alike, don't go to Alpine.