Crystal - 01/21

Very very nice day, warmer, sunnier, smaller crowd on the mountain, still plenty of firm packed cold chalk to ski and lots of soft mucky mush to ski mid day till I left late today. Rocks definitely worse on top of HC, don’t remember noticing any rocks anywhere else. Either side of HC chair in the sun was great this early afternoon – especially the best run of the day chasing Mr Ferk down Rabbit Ears around 2pm! Soft, fast and oh so nice -ouch. Did many PB/BP runs today. Front side of REX – Showtime to Memorial (last run at 3pm and still soft). GV Bowl was very nice all day. No lift lines other than maybe a little on FQex.

Other info – Soups, Coconut Curry Chicken and Tomato Bisque (side of rice would be nice). Parking I hear is irrelevant but here it is anyway – Pay lot did a very poor job showing up today, C/D/E full, B lot maybe ¾ full? Fair number of folks around, still good for business. Views today from Oregon to Canada to the Olympics – and a lot of mucky fog in the PS lowlands.

It's been quite a run of good skiing the last 3 weeks. Fluffy powder days, cold sunny days… but the last week of spring-like conditions has pretty much finished off the snow. Not to mention our sunny, ditch-digging runs down the Frontside all afternoon. Still some nice snow in the shade/north facers, but both sides of Six are extremely rocky getting off the top. Traversing left across the top of Powder Bowl is very sketchy, and then dropping through the rocks is tough. Don't even think about catching an edge. Yesterday we saw a motionless body in Little Portillo, a victim of one of this week's numerous top-to-bottom slides (don't know the outcome). Sunny aspects softened nicely but will be quite un-nice when they don't thaw. It will take more then this week's dustings of snow to refresh both the rocks and the frozen glop.
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...., but both sides of Six are extremely rocky getting off the top. Traversing left across the top of Powder Bowl is very sketchy, and then dropping through the rocks is tough.... +

Sorry just gotta add that HC is truly a challenge right now – Double Diamond Chair – Saw folks walking their skis or boards down the 10 or 20 ft to pass “most” of the top rocks heading south, also have to say that the Ski Patrol has been doing a great job at the end of their work day shoveling snow onto the slope on the north side of the top shack – easy path down from there and you can still get to most everywhere with not to much effort (especially down to Rabbit Ears!). Been doing HC probably 10 times a day for the last couple of weeks and still don’t have any significant ptex damage (much less edges, lucky so far I guess). But by all means please don’t go up HC – leaves more for me. BTW – everything is gonna change day after tomorrow anyway, so never mind.