I'm sure people have had the experience of a "found powder day". This was one of them.
My boys are involved with CMAC (Crystal Mountain Alpine Club). As much as regular lessons were cancelled CMAC had reaffirmed they would be on for Saturday. When I woke up in Seattle I heard the report of 34F at the bottom (maybe raining?) and snowing in Green Valley with high winds, Even the Crystal website was warning that due to high winds the upper mountain might not open. I have to say the thought of skiing crud only on the bottom of the mountain was not thrilling me. But we'd made a commitment so off we headed to Crystal. The drive was a breeze with bare and wet pavement and no closure debris to be seen. We got to the mountain at 8am and it was snowing with very little wind. Drop off at CMAC shack in somewhat chunky snow made me wonder if I'd really packed that newspaper and would I be reading it soon.. I decided to head up with some friends to see what conditions were like up top. The lifts rolled at about 8:45 and as we rode REX we noticed that the conditions below us actually resembled powder. We got off and headed down and amazingly enough it was powder. Nothing as fluffy as earlier in the week, but it was honest to goodness good/fun SNOW that allowed you to ski just about any line. I was lucky enough to hit Northway when it opened and spent most of the rest of the day there. The temperatures continued to drop and as the day went on it snowed harder and harder and conditions just got better and better. Aside from the beginning of the day, I didn't come across any lift lines. We left the mountain at 3:30pm with big smiles on our faces from the wonderful surprise day.
At the very bottom of Kelly's gap where you hit the cat track I ran into a rain crust in the morning, but at the end of the afternoon all the new snow had made most of that disappear. I heard bombing in the Southback in the morning, but because I stayed North (why leave good snow?), I don't know if the South every opened.
