Thursday: Basically, the carving goods were there today.
Snow is marginal. The base area suffers the most. Snow machines were in business building up the bunny hill. There was just enough snow to do real skiing, bombing down the groomers, etc. It snowed lightly today. But Crystal is going to need some serious new snow. Crystal's listing of 22" at base is just not useful. When Crystal does this, it means they can't be counted on to give reliable information. The lower meadows were melted out under the chair line with running water. However, it was possible to ski from the Forest Queen lift to base by way of Quick Silver on good snow. This is just a race of snow accumulation against natural depletion. There was snow on the parking lot all day, so temps are pretty good.
There were some small and avoidable rocks and other artifacts that will eventually get covered up. At the bottom of Queens Run, there was a serious exposure of big rock about three feet wide that could be avoided if you are paying attention. I picked up some scratches on my skis. I am always patching up my skis so for me, no big deal.
The good new was that there was plenty of good snow on the main groomers. Soft packed and groomed with a fresh surface. With so few folks out, you could safely do a speed run. Lower groomers good.
Sunnyside under the Rex is very melted out and obviously suffered avy type sluffing and sliding. All the steep areas that I saw off the groomers had some problems. Serious avy chunks all over the place.
Green Valley Bowl - Very Good! .... wide area of great snow, fast and easy. I was surprised that those big rocks at the rim were all covered up - very nice. And.... great all the way to the bottom GV lift station.
Lucky Shot - Very good.... fun and easy to ski.
After seeing poor Sunnyside.... wasn't tempted to look at Ice Berg.
Snorting Elk bowl was kind of a shock... the north end of the Elk below the new lift terminal got a haircut. Lots of trees are gone so you can see into the north back. Lots of broken branches, etc. laying around. Skiing around there wasn't very exciting today - had to dodge debris and rocks. I can see that instead of being a nice little skiing corner, that piece of Snorting Elk is going to be a corridor.
All in all a good day of skiing with friends.
On the way up, we had to wait on highway 410 for a tree cutting crew. Well, guess what? when we got up there Crystal had lost power! Ticket lines were backed up because they couldn't sell lift tickets. Had to take my keychain flashlight into the men's room with me, although there was a battle lantern turned on back there somewhere. Lifts went to diesel power. Yup... they felled a tree onto the power lines down there about mile 35. Even after power was restored... no credit card purchases because no phone lines.
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