Crystal - 03/06

Pretty interesting day, snowing hard early (please keep it up- sadly did not till late in the day again), a few screamer fast groomers early, some poking around the edges of off piste areas – best early was Lower Lucky Trees, still smooth enough and with some quantity of new was pretty fun, especially low skier left in the trees, a couple of tries out into BP/OF areas – okay but I did not repeat them, almost sun during the 10am hour – caused good vis and almost softening conditions in fun places, so GV bowl and Sunnyside where my places of choice – fun good smooth fun and fast (Sunnyside happened more than a few times). Break for checking the soup at CB lodge got me a run down Frisco and old chair 5 line – very nice soft and deep untracked. Spent the short afternoon getting to ski a few runs with my favorite patroller down West Face/Kellys Gap and Lower E – pretty fun all in all. Vis disappeared by 2pm pretty much everywhere, it was snowing nice wet sticky snow which I would like to have skied a little longer.

Other – Soup was Clam Chow, Pay lot smaller than normal, 8 buses, no lift lines, rode a few lifts with some nice folks, snowing hard when I left the parking lot, got lots of Girl Scout cookies. Wondering where Scotsman and Eskinmo skied today?

I'll say it – the off-piste sucked. On 9 out of 10 days, the best off-piste we skied today would be rated in the suck category. Today, we took the 3-4 good turns here and there and ignored the 6 turns of nastiness in between. After the first hour of awesome, very high-speed T2B groomers, we had to venture off-piste. A few turns here and there were good, mostly not. Where it was tolerable, one line through tore the good new snow off the nasty ice, and you had to find more untracked for your next line. We saw one guy on the Frontside, but someone on the chair commented he wasn't making it look so good, so we stayed away other than a few short forays into Memorial.

Crystal's gone into "ski season's over" mode, keeping Northway and C-6 closed monday and tuesday. And closed today, after saying at 7:30 they'd be open. West Face and C-3 Chairline had the snow of the day ,and I thought maybe some of Northway's NW facers would have the same blown-in pow over tolerable ice. Oh, and the Airbag and Quicksilver sound like they are closed for the season, Boo-Hoo.

An ice-covering wet snow was dumping at 2:00; hope it continues.
+

I got there about 10:15 and sneaked in the back of A lot.
Skied da groomers for a while and then hooked up with a couple of friends and we figured out that some low angle meadow skipping terrain might be OK so we headed into the BC and where rewarded with some pretty nice skiing where you could NOT feel the crust. FELT GOOD and did not suck.  Snowing continuously as I set the skin track out.

My friends retired to the Elk so I  skied a couple more TTB's and joined them for a beer and then went back out till closing bell.

At 2:30 Pm the place was empty and lonely....snow was still falling and the groomers were getting better and better.

Last run...it's ALWAYS the last run....I decided upon a Screaming Elk to  a Sluiceway finale but when I dropped into Snorting Elk...the mist descended and total white out vertigo occurred. I fell, ski came off and headed downhill. After a short slide I stood up and my dynafit break was lying in the snow at my feet.
I picked it up and skied down on one ski...which was not pretty. I found my ski ( not a bad place to lose a shoe thanks to the bowl at the bottom). Binding was fine but now minus a brake. Clicked in , skied down and home.
Brake doesn't seem broken and I'll need to see if I can reattach it.

In a word, the snow sucked off piste with a crust and chicken heads barely covered with wet snow. My knee can't stand groomers so I left after three runs. I'll bet Thurs will be better.

Hmmm. I agree, there was not enough new snow to sufficiently cover the death below, but i thought NW-E facing that were even slightly protected skied well. The lower angle the better.
The frozen below was not rock hard on these aspects to the point that with an aggressive attitude, and a little unweighting between turns it very closely resembled pow skiing. Just had to pay attention.
West face, pro course, pro course left through trees into lower gv, were all good, and of course all the groomed early was silky smooth with 2" fresh to push around.
I didn't go, but suspect one could have found some better than tolerable skiing out north. Considered hiking to check out NW bowl, but ran out of time.
I'm not an exceptional skier, but one important lesson I've learned is that the better I get, the more I'm able to enjoy skiing bad conditions.
Kind of makes me wish I would have invested in quality instruction really early on...

You guys should've been here tomorrow !