Crystal - 01/13

Nice day, more sun early, smaller than expected early crowd, nice grooming on the groomers we did, did PB/BP early – three times in a row, then on to other places, GV bowl by far the most fun packed snow (old pow?) bumps, learned how to ski the Crossfires again today – been over a week since I’d used them, they do like high speed screamin runs, but the edges could use a pro sharpening, late morning got some waves off Rainier that blocked the sun and slowed what melt happened today, then got more sun again for the rest of the day, almost warm at times, IceFerkberg almost got soft for a while but was going firm the last time we did it, did PB/BP’s at least 7 times – talk about hamster skiing!, lots of rocks on top of HC, but still can find a path through them with a couple of side steps in places, did one wild ride out to Hamburger – not worth a repeat, made the mistake of trying to ski lower lucky face late in the day – ugly no edging ice sheet as was Deerfly on our last run. Lifts all worked today, except for one stop on REX, no lift lines, no crowds, lots of buses in the lot when I left, Pay lot maybe 4/5 full – wow, a few car rows in B and C was workin on being full. Fun day all in all – definitely lots of vert and we survived Friday the 13th. Gonna be a little more crowded tomorrow and probably more grety. ddk

Finding the aspects to avoid yesterday really helped us zero in on the good snow today. More sun was welcome as it greatly improved the vis on the north facers over yesterday's cloud cover. Powder Bowl was even firmer today so we quickly headed North. (although I heard the skier's left chute was holding chalkier snow). Once on the Northway treadmill, we alternated Northway Chute and Bruce's Bowl. Both excellent down the mid-Northway bumps. We found a really good bumpline, soft, fast, and with some trees for excitement. Following the "Don't leave good snow to find snow" plan, we stayed there till the sun got too low to keep the vis up. Even though it was 40 degrees when we headed back to Rex, sunny aspects were still frozen hard. A couple Bear Pits were good, but the the extreme ice mid-run made us pull the plug and head home. Grinning, pumped, and anticipating some much needed new snow for next week.

Ken

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