Crystal - 01/12

I stand corrected, but it wasn't Gropple! We need more of it, so we can continue the research of cold smoke study at high elevation gravity fed fun project. I know there was a plume behind me, but heck I'm big enough to get a plume in mank. See you all on the next Powder day and let's all hope for that Cold Smoke of the mythical "Sinners" Bill Heath. Namaste!

It was good brother and there surely was snow flying off of all of us. Wohoo.

We can get cold smoke here in the PNW but it is pretty darn rare. Takes the cool temps combined with low moisture content and that latter item is hard to come by. It does happen though.

FWIW, I can take that 1st run snow any day, and cold smoke is not better per se......just different. All shades of the same color and man is it good.

Absolutely agreed (though I do, generally, think lighter powder is usually even better, but this is splitting hairs among very good things)! Perhaps we need a contest for the best term for the plumes that followed us on Sunday at Crystal. I keep thinking "snowblower wake" but that doesn't quite roll off the tongue - maybe just "snowblower" as in "it was some massive snowblower, dude"? In any case, a term that I'm sure applies to a bunch of what I skied there Sunday is "bottomless." I hope the guy we tried to help a bit near the Elk Snot traverse found his ski (our group had its own brief hunt for a ski that had found a tree well, and I pre-released when my tip knifed into a semi-soft bump and managed to head plant quickly so as to avoid getting more than about a minute of uphill trudging from the nearly fully buried ski)...

And indeed, I saw no graupel. Most of the snow flakes that were coming down on me during the day were heavily rimed, on their way toward graupel.