January 2, 2005, Crystal

Crystal was fun today. They hadn't opened the top yesterday due to the wind, so there was supposedly 10" of fresh up top. Thanks to that same wind, north facing slopes were much better than the south facing slopes. Typical cascade concrete, but there's nothing wrong with that . It got very crowded around 11, on all the main lifts (REX, Forest Queen, etc.) High campbell was generally alright all day.<br><br>Unfortunately, the ride back home around 4 was a nightmare. It took us 3.5 hours to get from the upper parking lot to 410 (7 miles.) All of crystal mountain blvd was a sheet of ice, and cars were skidding out all over the place. Did anyone else hit this? Any idea what was going on? Did they not salt or plow or something? It was pretty ludicrous.