Crystal - 01/25 Big Cold Blower Snow

Short Report - Yee Haa, Wooo Hooo, Ouch Big Fun.

Lots of Words Report - Arrived what I thought was reasonably early - not (but not bad),
parked in the back of the first free row with lots of folks milling around..Managed to park
my skis in the second row of CHex...and then lounged around in the lodge with a lot of
hyper folks getting ready for a BIG day. Cold, snowing hard all morning, fair CHex crowd
for a Thursday, hat to wait a couple of minutes to load REX (which allowed the Bucket
folks to get to the top first - dang again!) and then the frenzy fired up. Core area around REX
was busy (no lift lines though), lots of folks heading for big T2B runs, with all reporting
great conditions up high and not so great conditions towards the base. Being a total lazy
hamster, I spent the early morning skiing the Doors (primo got to ski some of my fav lines
that I haven't done this season yet), SunnySide (top a little wind blasted but the rest was
sweet and easy), M-World fun...and repeat and repeat with some runs in Lucky Trees (very
nice)...And when HC finally opened (early line up but not to big to keep me away)..PB/BP's!
and repeat and a run out towards the south (half way to the Throne)...and a late lunch and
repeat PB/BP and lots of hamstering on REX to beat my quads up...Great hard snow filling
in the early morning tracks made my left over runs very pleasant in the filtered mid day sun.
Never a lift line, did ride lifts with folks that were all having way to much fun on the best
of the season overall conditions - very deep in wind loaded areas, perfect packed pow in
lots of places and even more left over deep everywhere. DANG just perfect Marketing
conditions...I had fun, but the big skiers that made some minimal effort I'm pretty sure
had even bigger fun!

Other - Got lucky again and had to eat some Chicken Noodle at CB lodge (bonus). Fair
sized crowd but never a real lift line (other than a short one on Chair 6 once). Pay lot
was fair sized with a massive bus area (6 and a half when I left), rest of A was packed (and
many folks had already beat me out of the lot ?), B was maybe half full, and C was at least
¾ full...so a fair crowd on the mountain..maybe cause of the bad situation in the far
north step child ski area? Talked to at least one person that changed his plan this morning.
Great bonus day, great snow, great (enough) vis, great weekday crowd....probably a 6.5 on
the three point Quick Foot scale! I hope all the North and South skiers
will post some even bigger reports!

Here's some pics of XavierD in Brain Damage . . .