March 5-6, 2004, North/South BC Crystal

Pulled into lower B lot Thursday night around 9:30pm to find the moon lighting up the slopes.  Weather was quite calm considering the predicted storm.  Well that did not last long.  By 1am the winds picked up and clouds started moving in.  Woke to the sounds of plows next morning.  The report mentioned 5 inches of new but with all the wind... ;D  We made our way up Rex to find the wind howling.  With the wind temps must have been in the low teens or lower.  We took a line left of Iceburg Ridge.  Got that floaty feeling as we straight lined it to West Face which was mostly wind blown pow.  At the top of Green Valley I noticed that Northback was open.  Humped it out to top of Northway Peak to find all north facing, non-protected, chutes and slopes looking wind blasted and sketchy.  Wind was blowing so hard that there were snow devils (whirlwind of snow) everywhere.  My bud and I dropped into the protection of Bruce's Bowl.  We were the first group and the snow felt bottomless on my burton fish.  The traverse back was not bad since we were one of the first people thru.  We dropped into Employment Housing chute where the snow was fresh on tracked.  Was bumpy in some spots but nice along the treeline.  Next we made the hike out to Morning Glory Bowl to Brand-X.  Snow was even deeper, around 2 feet, and only a few tracks thru it.  Once we entered steeper sections of Brand-X I noticed about a foot of snow sluffing behind me.  Only signs of instability were on these steeper sections.  The lower Northway trail was the usual workout.  Well that's how the day ended with lap after lap in North.<br><br>On Saturday the sun decided to grace us with it's presence.  They finally opened Southback later in the morning.  Was 14 degrees and light.  I brought my radio to try to get a hold of my friends and all I got was people messing with me so I turned it off.  Mountain reached critical mass early.  I had to pull a Neo from Matrix to get a line to myself.  Kung-Foo alone was not working.  The lines I normally take were all tracked to hell so I had to be creative.  Once again the snow would sluff on steeper sections and some areas were slabby but I felt comfortable. Overall another great weekend.