Crystal - 02/16/16

Hhhhhmmm - where be the CD report?....Aaaahhh....With drawl symptoms were starting to kick in….so had to go today….Great fun day…nobody around early – even better!…limited good smooth lines in various places – first person in, great, next time around maybe not so great. Skied all the soft new (2 to 5 inch) lines in the mostly early sun breaks, late Doors, Bear Pits and Outer Ferks (aka Lucky Shot Trees)….all fun with early first tracks making big snow ball rollers everywhere. Bumped into CD off and on mid morning…fun. PB called during the early morning BIG sun breaks – it was good at times and pretty firm at other times (in the slide paths). MiddleIceFerkBerg was big time groomed and icy early, but was the primo soft happy zone by 10am and every time the vis was good for the rest of the day. Light crowd all day, no lift lines anywhere. Lots of nice sun breaks early, but increasing fog/cloud layers early afternoon…and even snow pellets at the top and RAIN lower mountain to the base when I left.

Other – Soup was Garden Vegy, lots of nice beer selection right now and the White Choc Macadam Nut cookies are very very good. Pay lot was almost (almost) full, cars in C and B lots, but not a lot.

Great Fun day….said that already, could do today for the rest of the season – oh not! We all want more cold icy nasty powder days – right?

Yes, it was a surprisingly nice day. Only a few things to add to ddk. First, a couple of negatives. Crystal only did 70% grooming last night: groomed 70% of the normal slopes and what they did groom were 70% as wide as normal. I've heard the groomers are very over worked this year, so it's OK they might have got a break last night. Second thing, C6 ran half speed all day. All the lift ops would say is maintenance set the speed. An 11 minute chair ride up 6 was a little long, so limited me to 3 runs up there, even though the snow was nice. I headed out to Northway and dropped in gate 5 (Paradise Bowl proper). Whoa, nasty breakable crust. Traversed to the left and found soft snow which was good. So, go in gate 4! across the flat middle section, the snow was slow and sticky. But the bottom bumps under the chair were awesome. The rain had smoothed them into big rolling mounds of corn that had a smooth, fast zipper line down the right side. Yeehaw. Had to go back up just to do that again. Next time down, did the Finger Chute into the bottom of Northway Bowl. Very fun. But the middle flat section was even stickier this time around and I had to push several sections. And then, those great bumps at the bottom. Didn't do a third repeat. Ditto everything else in ddk's report. In spite of all the warm temps and rain, the snow coverage is holding up well in most places.

Oh No...Sorry Mr CD I have to respectively disagree about one of your negatives.....Based on three days of rain and warm temps (maybe even a week?), I think the grooming was pretty impressive...Lucky and the Valley were done (just wide enough) before the snow fall overnight....MiddleIce(!)FerkBerg was done after the snow last night and I gotta say the Coombas with their unused sharp edges were not all that happy (but it was heaven after it all got happy soft)....So grooming - pretty okay with not much traffic on the slopes.......now Chair 6 speed....gotta say it was slow...gotta give the benefit to the mechanics that there was some other issue rather than just screwing us few repeaters....Did I mention that the Coombas where way happy today?

Found nice smooth3-6 on a steady crust in Morning Glory into brand X several times than did left angle trees to Kelly's to get my Nunataqs. Went to south and did some nice runs in A basin and the King till 2 when the vis deteriorated so you couldn't see the lumps and bumps.For me the tuna sandwich at Campbell is a good deal- never can eat the whole thing- great with grilled bread.

ddk, I agree the grooming was very nice...what was done. Iceberg wasn't wall-to-wall as usual, but not a problem with the lighter crowd. But, no grooming out the bottom of Snorting Elk, Bull Run, Deer Fly, Gandy's, etc.