Crystal - 3/20

Dry roads up and back, very light crowd, filtered sun off and on, and icy conditions. The best run was down a groomed Green Valley, over to Kelly's Gap, down a groomed Sluiceway, cat track to the far right side of Berry Patch, and down the widest grooming over there I've ever seen. In fact, I'm not sure I've seen it groomed over there before. But, it was buttery smooth and fast. Then, Lower E. Big icy bumps until noon when they started to soften for one run. Then we lost our sun and it started to snow, and Lower E was once again ice. However, the rest of the run was so fun, we did it over and over until we didn't. Then we went home.

And more words about today....

Short report – Should have been up yesterday…oh I was…expected a little more of yesterday…but – light early crowd on CHex, cool, nice SE winds howling on top, great icy nasty stuff off piste, half way decent high speed groomers, high cloud bands and sun breaks...

Lots of words – First day of Spring was not as nice as the last day of Winter! Arrived later than normal to a fair number of cars in the A lot, light crowd in the base lodge, cool, windy, grayish high overcast with sun breaks (yes yes please more) that tried to soften the slopes – not much got soft up high, down lower good groomer soft could be found (rode early afternoon with a true hamster…he had been doing SnotElk bowl to down out Kellys Gap to Berry Patch (?) – Berry was groomed to soft happy perfection, plus light traffic…Only did that for my kinda early lazy last run.
Lucky seemed the best early and looked like the sun might soften up…but then the next cloud band would blow trough and slow the melt. Heard good things about places, but most things in the core I could see were nasty (as proven by the crash test dummies on SunnySide and Powder Bowl). Lots of easy carving high speed turns with the BMW’s – I had forgotten how well they handle the screamer fast carving.

Other – CB lodge had Chicken Noodle for me again and it was very good…#1 got the last bowl of Triple C – made eskinmo sad. Pay lot very small and not full (Scotsman!), don’t remember paying attention to many of the other lots. No lift lines, lots of empty slopes….Another day on lift served snow at Crystal – not many left!
PS...Quick Foot please post a note!

What they said.

Got my fill of repeating high speed icy groomers, that’s for sure. Laughed at the scary parts of tucking all of Green Valley and Sluiceway. They should have had a T-Bar on Berry Patch. First day of spring?

Ken

.DDK says- Quick Foot please post a note!
Well, since you asked, One of those other places that skied well was Deer Fly. It had been groomed, was low enough and sunny enough to be the run of the day. We did several top to bottoms finishing on Deer Fly. Lower Bull, on the other hand, was one and done. It was nice to see the Hamster himself sitting in the Campbell basin Lodge eating a bowl of soup.