Crystal - 12/24

Yee Haa, big day from the start, big blue sunny sky, new dusting of snow all over the mountain smoothing out the views – oh and big views to everywhere from the top! Bolted straight to HC and PB for first run! First tracks in PB – nice smooth but maybe more firm than expected, but worth heading back. Spent some time up in Campbell Basin – the traverse over towards the Throne was surprisingly nice and fast. A few runs out Hamburger way and a couple half way out where nice and fast fun. Back to PB – better than the first, more traffic had cut up some of the lower bowl and the wind ( wind?) had blown in some new nice sugar. Finally at 10:30 went up REX to check out the rest of the ski world – well upper GV bowl (very nice) and then lots of hard hooks into SunnySide! Had held up well, got warmer and softer as the day went on. Rest of the day was a PB run followed by a number of SunnySide runs (with a REX chair line thrown in every once in a while), all very nice. Amazing what a half foot over a number of wet days can do for the ski slopes. Pretty much repeat hamster runs till 2:30 when I finished off with a Valley/IceFerkBerg run – valley bowl better and better and IceFerkBerg was still surprisingly nice – though the narrow ice slot at the bottom was don’t screw up skiing. Worst part of any runs was having to suffer some icy bumps on Lucky Shot every time I did PB (cant wait for BearPits to finally get enough snow).

Other – CB lodge had Ched Broc and a pretty good sized crowd when I passed through, also lots of good beer and some awesome White Choc Macadamia Nut cookies! The A lot looked like it got full, plus a lot of cars in C lot and B lot had rows of cars widely spaced – so it was a good X-Mass Eve crowd. Today changed my plans for tomorrow.

chipmunks were in up to their necks.....hamsters, were using snorkels...It was that good. And that was just the in bounds, out in the vastest of the crystal mnt back country i heard there was an ermine that couldn't even get out of his den. Well, that was clearly an exaggeration but still it was good, very good , even if you weren't a rodent

First tracks in 3-4 inches of nice-skiing, smooth, crunchy new in Campbell Basin and Powder Bowl identified the good snow for the day. We skied Powder Bowl left chutes nearly all day. Fast and faster as the day went on. Finally made a round of Rex and Green Valley. Only the Valley Bowl held the goods (Counterpoint – Frontside wasn't that good). A late arriving ski-season's-here holiday crowd tore things down to ice and rocks in the steeps and well travelled areas. 10Kft freezing level for a couple days will nicely soften the sunny aspects for a few days, but with no snow for at least a week, it's gonna get real tough.

Ken
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Powder bowl was enjoyable, as was the N facing aspects of Cambell basin -- sadly traverse over to there will have me doing some P-Tex repairs. Views were superlative -- Adams, Rainier, Stuart, Glacier and Baker.