Crystal - 1/30

This is Chis reporting from the base of Crystal Mountain. What a surprise huge powder day today. Crowds were light, visibility minimally affected by the puking snow all day, and maybe the best snow of the year so far. Where last week left off, this week kept on going once we got past yesterday's rain and wind.

Our adventure actually began yesterday when we realized we had a week ahead with no commitments and an encouraging weather forecast. So we booked a room at the mountain for the next several days and drove up last night, only to find the whole east side of the valley in darkness. A tree blew down and took out the feeder line to the lodges and condos on the east side, while the west side was burning bright. Unloaded the car in darkness, then headed to the Elk for a couple hours. Not really snowing. Returned to our room where it was 50 degrees inside, so made sure all the lights were off in case the power came on and went to bed. 11:30 the power came on because that's when the dishwasher started running.

Up this morning, looked out the window, and WOOOHOOOO. Over a foot of the aforementioned awesome snow. My adventure continued mid day when traversing out to Bear Pits. A snow boarder coming out of far right Powder Bowl unleashed a fairly big slide which took me out and loosing a ski in the process. Then his buddies followed him down further burying my ski and me. Thanks guys. After 30 minutes of digging, CMSkier found my ski almost 4 feet down. Whew. Thanks bud!

A most awesome day and a couple more coming.

And maybe to many more words about today -

Short Report - Heard comments about the Biggest Powder Day of the season!...It was mighty fine, though kinda a slow start...lots of hard cores skiing the big runs and lots of very efficient snow riders pretty much skied everything in the core between HC, REX and GV within a short early frenzy...and gotta say it was the deepest, lightest, funest frenzy this season. Plain Big...per many of the real Crystal big mountain skiers.

Lots of words Report - Arrived early to a reasonably sized A lot...with deep snow in the parking lot..snowed hard most of the early morning, making the off piste deep and sweet and the groomer runs also deep - gave #1 a powder work out on FQex. Crowd was reasonably light, but had to many hard core good skiers that pretty much knew all the places to go...Early vis was fuzzy, but lots of the upper
mountain opened up to almost blue bird nice....which high lighted all the left over deep pockets of untracked knee deep fun! Did bump into places where the ice layer was noticeable under the new...but those places were far apart. Never a lift line (other than early morning pucker waiting for CHex to start loading and even bigger pucker waiting for a long time for REX to start loading....Bucket line got to the top first again today - but not by much). Snow was increadable for this season...a totally unexpected bonus powder day. Heard lots of the big boys talking about some nice T2B runs and as we were leaving the patrol indicated that short north had finally opened up...ps - lots of small slides in bounds, pretty much every steep slope...be extra careful.

Other - #1 had a very impressive Glut Free Burger at CB lodge, soup was the spicy meat ball thingy, I had a very nice slice of pizza - Chub is producing some very interesting pizza's at CB lodge! Even if they aren't east coast primo. Pay lot nicely sized, cars in C and B lot - so there were a few folks around. Drive up and down was at happy speed. Great day! The next two should be as good as more of the mountain opens up.

Short addition - A lot of people waiting for Chinook, then waiting for Rex, only to gain 1/2 run over the 3 Forest Queenie warmup runs we took. Boot top new in the open areas was knee-deep face shots in the trees. Know where to go and there were hours of untracked lines left when everyone headed to Six. Visibility was on and off, hence Upper K2 instead of Powder Bowl, then JD's Chute in PB when the situation changed. Took all day of searching and I finally found a bad place, Gandy's coming out of B-Pits. Awesome day, nothing but fluff - NW fluff. People that didn't expect today obviously weren't watching the weather hour-by-hour yesterday.

Some people buy stupid ski cars, some don't know how to drive. Rant to both, especially the second as you're giving Subarus a bad name causing a slow drive down the Blvd.

Ken
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as one of the people that waited for rex I can report that ,"the state of Crystal mnt is strong " . Many of the people I stood with have given so much in order to be there standing , waiting , ready to give a portion of thier lives ...to server the powder that we all love. Thousands and Thousands and Thousands of vertical feet of totally incredible powder were skied by these brave individuals.In fact skier unemployment is at an all time high, something I'm proud to be a part of...As I looked across the great terrain that Crystal mnt has ,I asked myself what can I do as one skier to make thing even better than they are.....and it came to me.I can stand , not as an individual , but as one powder nation indevisable ,in line at Rex , supporting people who ski forest queen. But only looking forward.......YES....the state of crystal mnt is strong....god bless ALL who ski there

I got up early and found that the telemetry for Crystal said "powder day". The parking lot was filling up fast, but the walk was OK. It was snowing when we arrived and when we left in the afternoon. Yes, it was a great POWDER Day. Jill and I are in our 70's and have skied Crystal for decades. We soon realized that the younger folks know the "stashes" and we know the old folks' areas. It was fun to ski untracked lines that were not too steep to "slide", but steep enough to enjoy the new snow. On anything else it was so deep that it was a show stopper, especially for Jill. There was a brief sun break mid-morning and then the restart of more new powder.   

Zap & Jill

Sigh. Especially this year I WANT TO RETIRE. It will be rainy, again, this weekend in the hills. Killing me Zap

as one of the people that waited for rex I can report that ,"the state of Crystal mnt is strong " . Many of the people I stood with have given so much in order to be there standing , waiting , ready to give a portion of thier lives ...to server the powder that we all love. Thousands and Thousands and Thousands of vertical feet of totally incredible powder were skied by these brave individuals.In fact skier unemployment is at an all time high, something I'm proud to be a part of...As I looked across the great terrain that Crystal mnt has ,I asked myself what can I do as one skier to make thing even better than they are.....and it came to me.I can stand , not as an individual , but as one powder nation indevisable ,in line at Rex , supporting people who ski forest queen. But only looking forward.......YES....the state of crystal mnt is strong....god bless ALL who ski there

Yee haaa! Great post!