February 25, 2010 Crystal Mountain

Thursday - Good skiing!

My skiing on Thursday was so limited that I considered not even reporting on it.   I am in the middle of cold virus attack and really took it easy yesterday.   However, there are no other reports so here goes.

AM - snow on the parking lot and a layer of snow on the trees.  Weather was partly sunny, broken clouds and a thin overcast later in the day.  It was a strange effect to have the sun shining through a thin cloud layer and yet having snow-precip coming down.  It was precipitating right out of the fog.  Little tiny bits of ice crystals.

Snow - There was a layer of fresh over the groomers - very nice.  With the distinct lack of snowfall, we seem to be keeping enough of it to stay in the skiing game.  I noticed some pow, about three inches, extremely light so as to have almost no substance, in some areas. 

But this is spring in february.  The cherry trees along hwy 410 in buckley were in full bloom.  It is definitely spring-like at crystal.  Remember those years when we got five feet of snow in March?  Hmmmmm...

Snow is in good shape higher up.  Deer Fly, which is a nice steep lower slope had fresh heavy snow on approach and Thick clumpy mashed potatos on boiler plate on the steep.  I could turn on it ok because of the steepness.  Some of heavy stuff was sliding down the plate underneath my skis.

I didn't get around too much but friends said the high slopes were good. I didn't hear any complaints about ice.

Wow.... this is a whole winter of spring skiing!

Thursday was really primo. I did 4 laps up the shaded Throne and got fresh tracks and face shots all the way to the traverse. Down to the Campbell chair, though the snow was tracked, it was still very light and eminently skiable even at 3:40 on my last run down.

Here are some photos I just took off the camera... The second picture shows the untracked chute I skied on my second time up.