January 6, 2005, Crystal Mountain Resort

Also posted at Northwest Ski Report - www.nwsr.com/main.shtml

Thursday - Ice situation on our city streets and freeway made it an insane excercise to get to the slopes. Started skiing about 11:00am. After weeks of little snow, we finally got a hit of fresh stuff. Although stats say we only got one inch of snow, it seemed like two or three inches. We had a blast skiing on this fresh snow covering hardpack! Some of the rocks and snow gravel were still there. I put a heavy layer of hot wax on my skis to get some protection - seems to have worked. Looks like some pretty heavy snowfall in the weekend forecast, we need it. Queens run was fine. Snow Garden/Tinkerbell had a few terrain surprises as it rounded out back towards the lift area. Downhill was great! The Burn was good - a little boiler plate under the fresh, snow gravel at the bottom. Rolling Knolls was great. CMAC (lots of moguls) had a real terrain surprise - a big ditch across the run. It was somewhat skiable, but I took it too fast, lost a ski, and did a nice face plant. The Green Valley Bowl had some intimidating rock formations on the rim so we didn't bother with it. The big pleasure of the day was Luckyshot. Even though the fresh was only about two or three inches, it was powder fresh and smooth. Some boilerplate on steep part under the fresh. We skied Luckshot extra times because it was so powder fun. Bummer - the Forest Queen Lift had some real problems, many stops, long waits to get it operating - they need to give that lift some attention fast. We had a great ski day - 4:00pm came along much to soon.

Further comment - Sunnyside looks real bad - lots of exposed rock, vegitation, and rough terrain. I think that it needs about 36 inches to get it going. Evidently this slope got too much sun exposure to keep any snow so far. - Rux