Crystal Opening - 11/18

Pretty big start for the season…big early crowd – luckily for me I was close to the front of the Gondy line, at 9am the line wrapped back to the bottom of Discovery – Ouch!. Managed to get a number of fast nice and deep sweet sunny runs in the Valley before things started to back up. Lineup around 11am was huge – it hurt. Lucky S opened around noon so GV line disappeared. No lift lines in the Valley during the afternoon. IceFergBerg opened around 1:30 and it was very nice with the left over deep pockets from the early poaching. At 2pm the entire front side of REX was already poached. Big line for the Gondy when we left at 2:30. Sounds like most of the lifts will be running tomorrow, should be great. I definitely hit some rocks today and there is a lot of little trees and brush poking through. Pay lot was set up for a really busy weekend in January – haven’t parked that far back in the A lot in a long time – and the pay lot was empty when we left. B lot a few rows, C lot maybe a 1/3 full. So not a really big crowd but the limited lifts made for some over crowding. Still a great start. Ready for more. ddk

That was a rapid post. It's great to be getting a ride up the hills again.

Today was the first time that I waited for the gate to open at Lucky Shot - Worth the wait though since there was some powder out there still.

Knee deep powder and faceshots equaled the best opening runs of a season in many years. Huge Gondy line at opening, 60+ minutes (20 for us), remained large all day. Crystal tried to open quickly but was delayed by someone skinning up into the area where they were throwing bombs. What part of No Uphill Travel isn't understandable? After a round of perfect powder runs, the line grew to a 25 minutes. When they opened Luckyshot, in one run, it went to zero for the rest of the day.  The aforementioned Iceberg powder run out capped a great day.

Kkz
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Hmmm. THAT picture makes me want to go touring, somewhere far far away from Crystal ...

It was weird. After waiting in this line, we skied back to the chair and there was no line. Stayed that was for the rest of the day with only 1 in 4 chairs populated. Luckyshot and the Gondy line musta been great (Gondola was 35 minutes line at 2:00). Ooops, cat out of the bag. No, it was like this all day and will be everyday for the rest of the season.