February 5 and 6, 2005, Silver Basin

I opted out of a trip to Paradise to mow the local lawn with some friends starving for skiing.
There seems to be ample coverage (36 inches) on Silver Basin's North and semi-East facing slopes. Chair 4 is VERY slim picking skiing down through the rocks.
The 4-5 inches of new snow on Sat had bonded reasonably well to the crust layer, but still skied like softer ice. Lots of noise. Lower angle slopes were marginally better.
Sunday was a different story! It snowed and blew the whole period of our tour. The temps were 10 degrees warmer (25f) than Sat (15f) and the new (4-6 inches) completely filling in our skin tracks as we skied. The snow stability seemed to stay reasonably solid. We summited the South west bowl (Boxcar) of Silver. Skinning and booting up the last 125 steps.
We ski cut the top (North face) of the bowl where the snow was loading and small soft slabs were fracturing 8-10 inches. Enough to take several more ski cuts and evaluate the stability. After calming our concerns of snow stability we skied down the North Facing slope and the skiing was quite a bit better than the day before. We decided to not go back to the summit due to the increase in winds and snow volumes and skied lower angle slopes near Three way and the SE chutes of Silver King.  ;D
There was one group of 8 people that we called the "Mountainiers" due to the single file approach they had to assending, which resembled old Mt Rainier outing photos. And a couple other small groups enjoying the taste of Winter. It should be good skiing this week.
Most areas like Bullion and East peak need some hiking w/o skis to get to due to no snow before this storm blew. Also, if one was to consider skiing into Crystal Lakes plan your way out before you enter there is not much snow on most aspects where the sun has directed it's rays. You could end up stumbling on snow covered roots, rocks and grass like I did from the Three way exit chute to Silver Basin bowl (Saturdays Route).