Crystal -02/18

Short Report - Big Day, big new cold snow, big early and late crowd, big snowing most of the morning, big crowd in the base lodge when I left, big full parking lots, big fun with most of the hardcores showing up for the very nice cold smoke face shot deep snow - heard some comments about maybe the best day....at least for a holiday weekend Sunday.

Long Wordy Report - Got up extra early in case something happened in the lowlands - not!  Easy early drive with snow on the road from below Greenwater(?).  Arrived extra early and not in the first free row parking in A lot.  Lazed around the lodge with lots of other early folks (plus all the real hardcores), got first row for CHex and stood in a fair sized lineup way early.  Was snowing hard most of the morning.  First couple of runs down the frontside of REX were primo deep and cold smoke - just enough new to mostly cover all the ice underneath.  Line up on REX built up fast, so bailed over to FQex to check HC status - lineup for Chair 6 was small enough and only stood in line for a few minutes before it started loading - lift line was gone after 20 or so chairs.  Got a nice run down the center of Campbell Basin before the lineup blew up on 6 - so it was PB/BP's run - great! And back to the singles line on REX for more left over laps.  Did an early break at CB lodge and had a very nice piece of pizza....Thought about another trip up 6, but the lineup was way passed my tolerance...heard lots of bombs out south- assume everyone was waiting for South to open.  Heard great reports from folks about fun big runs that I'm to lazy to do, also heard comments about some areas down low out northish not being so pleasant.  All in all a very mighty fine day even with the big crowds.  Quit kinda early do to low energy.

Other - Soup at CB lodge was Clam Chow (and it wasn't even a Friday).  Parking in the Pay lot was a total mess when I left - single wacky all over the places rows and parking...rest of the lots looked normal and they were all full - heard it was another turn people away day (by 10am!). Seems like I have skied on more than one of those days this season.... Also heard that the cable partially came off one of the towers (12 or 13?) on REX yesterday during one of the really big wind gusts....they managed to get it reset before needing to evac the folks on the lift.  Folks that skied yesterday said the chairs on REX and HC were swinging pretty big yesterday...PS saw binx afew times today...😉