Crystal - 4/16

Happy Easter, everyone!

A strong, cold east wind and high overcast skies resulted in a day quite different than the expected sunny spring day. Crystal shut down the gondola after Easter services due to the wind and completely pulled the plug on it at 11am, removing all the buckets and closing the restaurant on top.

Green Valley and the groomers were good. Powder Bowl just OK. Coming out of PB, one of our party mistook my hand gestures for "don't go to Bear Pits" to "Go to Bear Pits". As I headed down Lucky Shot, I looked over my shoulder to see him heading into the pits. Oh no. He reported it was some of the worst skiing in his entire 46 years of skiing. I'm sure there will be more on that in a follow-on report. Good thing I no go. The best snow was skiers far right in Snorting Elk Bowl accessed from the front side. The swirling winds continuously dumped granular sugar snow on that face and was refreshed every run. But then, you had to get pelted by the same snow and wind as you skied down. Still worth many, many repeats. Around 12:30, some of the groomers actually started to soften, but off piste (except noted above) remained a nightmare.

Considering Crystal closed on this day last year, the coverage is amazing. No rocks popping up anywhere, even in the usual places. All the late season snow has provided fantastic coverage. Only one more week.

Thought about skiing today....did Sunrse service , nice views but brutal winds. BP's...pretty funny.

Ditto CD’s report.

one of our party mistook my hand gestures for "don't go to Bear Pits" to "Go to Bear Pits".  As I headed down Lucky Shot, I looked over my shoulder to see him heading into the pits.  Oh no.  He reported it was some of the worst skiing in his entire 46 years of skiing.  I'm sure there will be more on that in a follow-on report.  Good thing I no go.

I was the idiot that tested Bear Pits. We often say “I’ve skied it worse” to make us feel better. Couldn’t say that today. Can only think of one time something skied worse than Bear Pits did today. Just enough 15 turn good spots to keep the fun rolling till noon:30. Took some big face whacks from blowing ice chunks. I think Spring didn’t get the right memo.

Great coverage. Not the deepest, but it’s dense.

Ken
+

After a couple of fast groomer T2B's I persuaded my pal PNWBrit that we needed to suffer and get some type 2 fun so I spent day hunting bad snow to ski and i succeeded beyond my expectations.

Skied A-Basin and DFF - Breakable crust-- worst snow of the day -survival skiing..
Skied Horse-shoe Cliffs- Nice powder in chute... Short North and I5 traverse back to base was truly horrendous forzen coral reef-Dentist's dream.

PNWBrit gave up at this stage and I had to drive him back to his cabin because his back was knackered after that... but I was not deterred so I  drove back up and after a couple of re-warm up T2B's I went out Southback solo because I couldn't find anybody stupid enough to come with me.

.Chunder to the airstrip and the sticky back to the base .

Then I went home and chopped wood.

At least someone is still training for Alpental!