January 29, 2006, Crystal

Crystal was great today. The parking lots were packed, and during the middle of the day, I saw some crazy lines at Rex and Forest Queen. Of course, I was lapping high cambell all day, so those lines didn't bother me.<br><br>The day started with maybe 4 fresh on top of yesterday's goodness. It was all light and fluffy. Around 11 it started to snow, and really started dumping in the afternoon. They had to close the whole upper mountain by 3 due to winds. That's ok, with all of the windblown snow and everything coming down, there was even goodness to be found on the now-empty forest queen. Northback opened around 11.<br><br>Who could ask for more? I skiied down to the car, and there was easily 5 inches on it. People who had been there since Friday night needed a bunch of pushes to get out of the snow drifts that covered their cars.<br><br>It was dumping as we were leaving, and I imagine with all of the wind and snow, tomorrow should be untracked and epic. Time to quit the day job

I don't often go to the lifts but I have to admit that it was a hoot on Saturday at Crystal. Even though it was a bit busy there were endless lines of freshies. Excellent day.

sunday was the first time I'd skied at Crystal in a couple years....the pain of that $50 lift ticket was softened when the north backcountry opened, all that unskied fluff from saturday was waiting. Spent almost the whole day skiing back there alternating between taking I-5 or the bus back to the base.<br>Once the upper mountain was shut down by winds, we headed over to Bear Pits, if/when you found something untracked it didn't take much effort to get the top 8" fracture and run. Kinda made me glad to still have my trasceiver on.<br>Saw a woman get caught up in a slide (guessing it was her own ski-triggered slough) near Bear Pits and got carried about 100ft...unhurt and forunately had buddies above her to collect her skis. <br><br><br>