Crystal - 03/29 Ultra Early Report

Today? It definitely wasn't yesterday. Less sun, similar crowd, light winds, some nice grooming, couple inches new up top made GV Bowl entertaining especially when there was some filtered sun helping to highlight the smooth parts and the still lumpy parts (my go to Hamster run today was GV Bowl to MIFB - which got better all morning with the cloudy sun radiation).  Did PB once - untracked smooth enough to be fun, but my slowish brain didn't pull me back up there (still tired from yesterday and the vis was iffy at times). High overcast early, almost sun breaks around 11 then a significant snow event and then a significant snow pellet event got me to bail out extra early - expected the weather to get worse, but when I pulled out of the parking lot it was almost happy sunny nice - not so based on the cams a little while later. Rocks on top of HC aren't to bad if you know where to go, coverage on the rest of the mountain is enough to last till closing.

Other - CB lodge had Chicken Noodle again cause of me (from what I'm hearing, sorry to folks that like other types of soup), meat lovers pizza was good. Had a nice social and ski with a friend that just got back skiing after a bad knee sprain during the big Feb snow event - congrats! Pay lot normal small and not full of folks with pay lot permits, rest of A with some overflow towards C and a few cars parked around the B lot shuttle stop. Drive up and down was at happy cruse control speed, only saw a couple of elk this morning.

A 2.5 out of 5 kinda day.

No wind today and the temps were comfortable, but occasional visibility issues either due to flat light or snow pellets. A 1.5 out of 2 for weather.

I'll give the snow a 1 out of 3, although it did improve as the day went on. Groomers were pretty firm early on. Off-piste, GV right to chair line (chair line holding the best snow on the mountain), Snorting Elk right, and the first 6 turns off the top of Powder Bowl. Below that, a boneyard of frozen chicken heads not worth a repeat. Lower E softened nicely by 1pm.

As ddk mentioned, there was a snow event that dumped an inch or two of pellet like snow. While this helped the slopes some, it was weird snow as it was strangely sticky and slow to ski through where it piled up. After it let up, we got a nice sun break for some quick hamster runs, then bailed when the next set of snow flurries moved in. Raining in the parking lot, but snowing at the bottom of CHEX, so I guess we know where the snow level was.

Overall, the snow is horrible with acres of frozen hard junk. Poking around found the good spots, some really good spots, and some unexpected areas that responded well to authority. With no rhyme or reason, as aspects with the same exposure and altitude varied from great to terrible. The weather joined in changing every 15 minutes form flat light and heavy graupel to bright and precipless. And back. The best run would have been to start with the upper ¼ of Powder Bowl into Green Valley Bowl, onto Elk Snort, back to Grubstake Trees, into C-3 Chairline, and down the Sluiceway-Berry Patch-Lower E line. Unfortunately, we could not find that option on the run selector and had to do a lot of firm/icy In-Betweeners.

I'd put 20$ in my pocket as I expected there was a pretty good chance odd pizza and expensive beer might be the call mid-day. Glad we stayed out instead. All bets off for conditions tomorrow.

Ken