Crystal - 02/18/16

Another dang BIG BONUS BETTER than expected Thursday ;D…(heard from a guy on HC that last Thursday was even BIGGER per him lapping Chair 6…hhhhmmm….). Looked iffy early with big winds and kinda late opening of CHex (late loading of the buckets), but all was happy by 9:15…REX running nicely, snowing hard, wind screaming up top, big screamer powder runs through the Doors – dang those hard cores that kept blowing by me…Did mostly early Doors and Bearpits(!)…Noticed a little late that HC was open…even better times, did a number of runs in Campbell Basin (slots 1, 2 and 3 – all nice), after a happy pause in CB lodge around 11am! Guess why? Jumped into PB finally just before noon in my fav line skier right off the top!!!!! Dang untracked knee deep happy snow – OUCH! A little challenging mid bowl in the slide paths – hook right and happy times all the way down and through Outer Ferks which had not had to much traffic yet. Kept thinking about going back….but easy life on REX and GV (the bowl was great), kept me in the lazy Hamster treadmill. Groomers (Lucky) were not pretty early – hardest firm perfect grooming I’ve suffered, everything off piste much better and I’m sure a lot of folks found a lot of better off piste than I did. Top 2/3rd was pretty nice on the mountain, but lower down was warmish impacted and skied kinda challenging (setup early ski tracks, firming up ice balls..etc).

Other – Soup at CB lodge was the big random unexpected Chicken Noodle ( and I got the special BIG bowl). No lift lines, no crowds, not many folks cutting up my fav lines (and other folks I know fav lines – except me!). Parking was typical with actually folks parking in C and B….pretty fair crowd. Great day…glad I suffered it! : Always glad

Yeah, awesome day indeed, fresh tracks from start to finish, from Grubstake to Rinky Dink to Powder Bowl and CB . . . then they opened Northway and it started all over again. Frozen chicken heads and bowling balls were just soft enough not to cause a problem. Seemed like half of the Alpental locals were in attendance and loving it. No soup but the teriyaki chicken bowl was quite good, even though the chicken was too salty (tastes like it was soaked in brine).