April 14, 2013 Crystal

This was a great day on the mountain. Hillary and Dale were skiing on their touring gear and we were on our downhill gear.  Jill and I skied the groomers and the powder along the edges.  After my stay in the hospital last year, I am getting more strength, and it was a powder day at Crystal.  The Ski Patrol was blasting in Avalanche and Silver Basins getting them ready for a great afternoon.  The lowest temp was 32 degrees for an hour and the top was cold.  It was snowing for 2 hours and there was a bit of new.  The sun came out for an hour in the morning and then some clouds.  It was great watching folks having fun in the powder.  It’s been 2 years since I last skied the intermediate powder by the Quicksilver lift.  There were only a few skiers there, and we hand a blast skiing 10” of untracked powder.  We did 3 runs over there and ended the day around 12:30pm.  Hopefully the Southback opened for the afternoon.  I had a BBQ bacon burger which was okay, but a lot of the chips were soggy.   What a great day for the middle of April – fresh powder that was light and fluffy punctuated with periodic sun breaks.  Perfect. 

Shin-to-knee-deep off piste was much, much better than expected. Weird weather cycled through thick fog, dumping snow, broken sun, changing every half hour. Frontside untracked early and Employee Housing felt like mid winter. We hit Six during a foggy cycle with bad vis in Campbell Basin but found great snow on Upper K2 and K2 Face. A second round of E-Housing closed out a sun break just as the snow thickened and made us shed clothes. Five minutes later it was dumping again. An inch or two of new covered everything for the next hour till the sun came out again, and heaviness continued to build. Well-skied areas and groomers were packing hard; you could hear the snow crunch and firm. Awesome day with a crowd that couldn't keep Rex filled.
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Awesome Day.

Southback opened around 11:30. Northway never opened and I heard that crystal has decided that it is closed for the season for budgetary reasons. They did open the gate to paradise bowl. I got to enjoy I-5 just like the good ole days. And on I-5, I saw the barren bottom of Right angle trees which explained why they had closed signs at 5400ft on RightAngle indicating we should traverse right. Ha...I never knew there was cat track down from Kelly's gap.

Northway was indeed open, just not the chair. And it was gooooood!

after further investigation,
the southern resort was the winning call.

must have been lovely!
bF

Sorry to miss you Zap, but face shots and no lines were indeed a winning combination. Chili at the Bullwheel was excellent, but took forever to arrive.