Nov 22nd, 2006 - Crystal Mt

I had a great morning at Crystal today before returning home to collect the kids and start cooking. It was definitely worth the early departure.

Overall, coverage was good. A few of the E facing slopes that had been wind scoured showed the rain crust with some foliage just underneath. But the crust was very supportive and I tended to skim over most of the trouble spots without actually hitting anything. A few places in the fetch of the wind (e.g. the front side of Campbell Basin) looked like they had rocks lurking beneath. But I never hit anything.

We got a few inches of new in the AM and the precip picked up by 11A to a steady moderate level. There was over a foot of new in some of the sheltered areas and maybe 6-8" in the other spots. It was all lighter than expected.

BTW, Powder Bowl opened around 11 and offered great turns. Most of the mountain seemed open (except the BC areas).

Get out and ski if you can this weekend. Keep an eye on that rain crust of you go into the BC. A number of areas showed sloughs and natural slides off that layer overnight.

Thought I'd add my 2 cents. Arrived at 1100. When I left 4 hours later there were 5" new on the car. Upper Exterminator was relatively lightly skied all day, and at 1 o'clock I was still hitting stretches of 18"+ of light snow. It was amazingly good, much better than I would have expected. Even the roll at the top of lower exterminator was sufficiently covered with soft snow so that you could pretty well ski right down it without bottoming out on the the old crust. Telemetry shows 4 more inches as of 9 PM, so my guess is that it will be an outstanding day Thanksgiving. If you can get out, go!

Hear hear!

Eric and I arrived separately and ended up skiing together most of the day. It was really good for my first day of lift skiing this year. With caution, I didn't hit any rocks.

I solemnly swear I'm gonna call Eric to carpool the next time I ski on a weekday, even if I decide to go at the last minute (which is how it always seems to work).