Crystal 3/19 Flying Chunks

Our 9 am gondy ride was excruciatingly slow -- and for good reason! Gusts of 60+ MPH from The Dreaded East greeted us atop GV with flying chunks of frozen crap -- and it hurt! We tested our mettle with Snort's Blazing Elk and down the throat of GV. Amazing how a good tuck and warm wax allowed for this skier to slice through the headwind while waiting for things to heat up. The gondy was closed from about 10 - 2 pm today, and NWay never opened. C6 was open from 2-3 pm, with our one run through chute 1.0 under the chair being a sloppy mess. An entire section atop C6 (NE of the lift hut, along PB's south ridge) had melted away -- so sidestepping down behind  the hut was absolutely required.

Despite the havoc up top, the slides under Rockface continued to impress -- with today's rubble extending well into Berry Patch. As the hill heated up, the crunchy corduroy overlaps disappeared. It seemed that last night's grooming effort was uncharacteristically off -- but at least we didn't see any sleds.

Noticed that very few skiers ventured into PB - but perhaps that was because very few folks were on the hill. All the kids were in school, and many regulars just didn't show due to Monday's report.  By the time the hill hit 55 F, the winds died down and it was once again fun to be up top. The absence of grabby snow (at least for my boards) made for some screaming top-to-bottom runs.  Gotta luv it when proper compaction is present in all the right places.