Home > Trip Reports > Oct 13, 2013, Green Valley -- Crystal Mountain

Oct 13, 2013, Green Valley -- Crystal Mountain

10/13/13
WA Cascades West Slopes South (Mt Rainier)
4279
8
Posted by ron j on 10/15/13 10:50am
What with the foliage covered with the new season€™s first dump and the National Park closed up tight, there seems to be a dearth of TR€™s of late. Possibly some folks seem a bit puzzled as to where to hike and ski right now.  So I thought I€™d fill folks in on what the geezer patrol did this last weekend to get some calories burned and some skis turned.

Since Green Valley has often been good for an early season tour in years past, and Crystal was nice enough to open for one day following that first season dump to give us lots of nice skier compaction, we kept our eyes on the telemetry thereafter, to see if it might be later worth risking the 2400 vf trek. We noticed that the temps had stayed fairly low at Green Valley during the 10 days preceding last weekend and it appeared that there could have been a little fresh snow since the Crystal one day opening.

So leaning on our trusty €œwell, at least we€™ll get some exercise€ reasoning, the MadDog and I headed for Crystal. I expected to see other skiers gearing but there we none. The place was deserted.  Just before we started out a hiker couple pulled up and reminded us that the snow was €œa long hike up there€.  ::)

True to form for prior early seasons tours to GV, as Kelly€™s Gap Road comes into the bottom of the valley at 5400 ft elev. the ground cover again went from dirt to continuous snow in literally one step. I€™ve always found that fascinating. As soon as we got to skinning we knew we had made a good call. At the bottom of the GV chair the old snow was bomb proof and we had a ski thickness of ski penetration with probably an inch or less of fresh over the refrozen old snow.

By the time we got to the summit the fresh was about 3 inches and the skiing was like skiing hot skis in butter.














We both decided that the run down will be as serious contender for the best skiing of the 13/14 ski season. Had we both not needed to be home early we would have trudged up for another 1000 ft run down GV.

Looks like enough coveraqge to be able to ski all day! At least, Silas Wild might try to, he of the 10000-foot ski-area days!! Wish I lived closer; MUCH nicer than the 600 feet of complete frozen I used on Sunday at Stevens Pass...

Jill and I are in NH with the grandkids and you made my day.  You "kids" are back to skiing. 

Great day and nice turns with MadDog !

Nice work, looks creamy dreamy!



looks nice , I'm thinking why wasn't I there ?  :)

snow is such amazing stuff, great turnsss.

Oh man, this is the BEST. A TR from ronj and MadDog have become rare gems.

This is like flashing back to the good old days circa 2003 when I started into this sport with you as my mentors.

Looks awesome!!

Seriously - good to see a Dog & j TR for sure.

Thanks, guys,
You're too kind.

Reply to this TR

11321
oct-13-2013-green-valley-crystal-mountain
ron j
2013-10-15 17:50:47