Crystal - 1/15

I'm going to rate it a 2.3 out of 3 day. The .7 deduction was due to cooler temperatures, cold east wind, and filtered sun that did not allow the slopes to soften.

Arrived to free parking at the bridge. Nice. Extremely light crowd all day, some runs not seeing another person until at the lift. Visibility was good, but chair speed was impacted due to those pesky east winds. Gondie was on and off wind hold all day. Slopes stayed firm, but with the ultra light crowd, groomers stayed carvable and actually improved some as the day went on. Luckily, Green Valley, Snorting Elk, and Powder Bowl had really nice chalky snow that was fun to ski. Bear Pits not so much and definitely not worth a repeat. The rocks at the top of C6 are getting bad. Quite a bit of side stepping down exposed rocks on the PB side and didn't even want to attempt the moguls off the top to Campbell Basin. Also, rocks starting to show up on some of the other slopes as well. I think yesterday was probably the day of the week based on the forecast for the rest of the week.

And more verbiage and opinions - Another day, another different day, colder feeling, more wind (supposedly), firmer snow in places (MIFB very firm early and mostly all day - glad I got the new K2 Exp's with edges and still are very capable of carving a turn! Yee Haa!). No crowd, no lift lines, slow upper mountain lifts(REX should not have been running that slow with winds straight up the chair line and definitely no chair swinging - oh well made Chair 6 fill fast). Pretty good grooming, pretty good styro off piste - especially GV Bowl(many Hamster runs heading to MIFB) and also PB after you got off the rock fest of 30 ft at the top - then sweet, steep, smooth and fast (sssf). Not so impressive was BP's the line I do to many times - glad I survived - not really, but don't screw up conditions - heard from the #1 BP's skier that main line BP's drop was happy...not sure when I should totally believe him! Fun day, felt cold cause of the ridge top winds and the high speed screamers on MIFB. Baby bumps and smooth wind groomed conditions on PB and GV bowl were prime Hamster Treadmill suck the brain in conditions!

Other - Pay lot reasonably sized, reasonably full, some buses, not many cars below the A lot (except employees in . Drive up and down was at happy cruise control speed. Soup at CB lodge was Chicken Noodle and it was very good with that IPA.