2nd deepest and 2nd earliest opening day I have experienced in the past 12 years (2009-2010's being the 1st in both categories). Worth the early wake-up call. Worth the long drive. Worth the time off work.
Bigly, but not as huge as last year's, first chair lineup for 1 this morning. I lucked into a spot near the front as I was rolling solo and a triple needed one more. All chairs loaded within a few minutes of opening bell, despite the snow report indicating that would not be the case when I last checked before leaving cell service behind on the way up. Bottomless snow but by no means blower. Very heavy below 4k on the lower reaches of 4/5/6, surface conditions outside Raven Hut were greasy and slick. Better snow down low on 8, but worse visibility at its upper terminus. The Elbow got hammered harder than most of the inbounds terrain in the morning. No evidence of travel above the top of 8 the few times I could sort of see up there. Crowd evaporated by noon... I guess everybody had to go back to farm pot or whatever it is that people in Bellingham do. Visbility was Baker classic and it more or less puked wet snow all day with only a few, brief breaks. Still snowing lightly when I left at the end of the day.
I started @ Heather Meadows and made several high-enough quality laps on 1 before making my way over to the Shuksan side. 6 was slayed almost immediately and with Gabl's closed to inbounds users, 5 didn't have much of an appeal - I only rode it once. The new Chair 7 is nice, albeit it still seems to take forever to ride it to the top. Soup was chowder washed-down with Vitamins P, B & R. Pay lot was, as usual, non-existent.
