February 4, Crystal Basin and Silver King

Paul and I did a fun tour in the Crystal Mountain slackcountry today.  We skinned up Chair 4 and then made our way up the groomed trail before shooting up the slopes to Silver King (just in time to meet the resort crowd  ::)).  After soaking in some great views we cruised down the ridge to the south and dropped into Crystal Basin.  The snow was grabby slush, but this being our first time to Crystal Basin we were awed by the number of great ski lines all over the place!  We skinned our way back up to Silver King with the sun out in full force which made it outright hot up there!!  Awesome lenticulars were forming over Adams and Rainier all day, but around noon they got blown away from the mountains creating some crazy UFO-like clouds floating away to the east.  We cruised back down into Silver Basin which had better snow and back to the car for a nice 6hr trip (incl. lots of gawking time  :D)  Too bad we missed Super Bowl kickoff...

(That's me skiing down in the middle of the last photo, kind of hard to see I guess)