Crystal - 01/14

Almost another marketing report – Early morning telemetry made me go, relatively light winds and temps cold enough for wet snow on top….pulled into the A lot at 8:30 to a fairly nice sucker hole (lots would say me), quick change and jump onto the third bucket at 8:50 with one top restaurant employee. Everything top to bottom had a layer of new making things look nice – but early on the only nice areas were above the bottom of GV main bowl/Grubstake Trees, nice soft boot deep leftovers from yesterday, below that point crusty hard lumped up stuff – stay on the groomers. And the lower part of Lucky Shot groomer was sticky nasty jerky snow. So I stayed up in the Valley for the first hour, finally doing some REX runs – Valley bowl to IceFerkberg (softening in the bright filtered sun, kinda doing that spring stuff)…then I noticed a patroller skiing PB and lookin good, the light for High Campbell went from yellow to green, so I did a couple of PB’s just as the winds started picking up. 10 o’clock hour was very nice. But around 11 even though the vis was still good with some sun breaks and high clouds, started to get some rain shower bands blowing in. Not as wet as on Wednesday, but it was wet. Snow started to get heavier up top, kept waiting for the afternoon clearing to blow in from the lowlands, but finally bailed at 1pm just as the vis really started to improve. The 3pm cam shot looks pretty nice. ddk

Thanks for the update. Looks like the Rainier rainshadow is keeping things tolerable at Crystal, in contrast to the total downpour ongoing at other WA and OR ski areas.

The 2pm cam shot looks even nicer. Since this is a marketing report, might as well include a pretty picture:

Thanks Amar...started to grab and post the picture... Today was one of those donut hole days provided by Rainier.

I went to give my wife moral support as she had an all day lesson.
Skied in rain until 12.30.
Quite a few skiers had adopted the garbage bag look that is sooooo PNW.
Afternoon was surprisingly nice. Giant sucker hole and a rainbow over White River and corn like conditions on Ferberg. As said , the light was lovely towards end of day.
Last run down ferberg was in nice light.
Ventured off groomers twice and regretted it as ddk says.
GV was starting to freeze by 3:30 and should be nice and hard by the morning. Its' all gonna be a giant ice cube by next Tuesday when this warm spell passes.