January 29, Crystal Mountain

After an hour and a half wait, we loaded Rex to find shin, knee, thigh, waist deep HEAVY snow. 18-24" of heavy new on a foot or two of soft snow. Sink a little too deep and you dropped to a thick, plowing stop. Heavy coat-your-goggles fog lent a hand to make things tough. Skied-out snow got better and the fog got worse as the day progressed. Bear Pits won honors for snow and visibility. Some nice lines were thrown down by skiers off the end of the Powder Bowl ridge, but I don't know how they could see. My coat was frozen with ice at the top of BP, soggy and wet at the bottom of the Pits. The upper snow layer broke into a 8-14" slab, but I didn't see any slide action. Heard of some good slides set off by patrol as they threw what sounded like a hundred bombs this morning. 32 degrees and pretty near rain at the base at 2:00.
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The best snow deep in the trees. TLC was the best run of the day - Special kind of day when you find yourself lapping TLC.