Crystal - 01/26

Based on the possible end of spring in the near future (and I do love spring mush!) and also not having done a Sunday in a long time, decided to go and suffer the crowds. Well I was pretty much disappointed in the lack of crowds – not! Other than early morning CHex lineup, didn’t really notice much lineage today, only had a couple of times riding with a full load on REX. Never checked out GV or NW lifts (though I heard second hand that NW was pretty empty early, skiing okay on the shady slopes and also actually nicely groomed on the flats and down to the bottom of the chair – wow! At least better than normal). Today was pretty much sameo sameo like so many days this “sad” season. Lots of early morning GV Bowl to Mid Ice Ferk runs (Middle Ferks was perfect groomed smooth and pretty soft from the start and just got nicer and softer and deeper as the day progressed). Lucky was also very nice all day. Did get the BB experience of seeing more people than I can ever remember seeing in IceFerkBerg once mid morning. Did a couple early runs down PB skier left down what has been recently called JD’s run. Getting off the top of the High Campbell if your heading towards BP’s is a mandatory skis off walk – I wasn’t willing to do that so it was always a hang left. Did a number of runs out to Hamburger – nice snow and the traverse out was pretty nice and easy, probably the easiest I have had this season (though I had not been out that way in a long time). After one last pass through HC early after noon, I spent the rest of the day in the easy hamster world of Showtime to SunnySide with a drop into MidIceFergBerg a number of times. Fun and easy and soft and spring.

Other – Soup in CB lodge was Broc Ched and the food lines I saw in there were the biggest of the day, wall to wall, Crystal accountants should be happy about that.
Pay lot was big and not full, but lots of cars, some with goodtogo passes. C lot pretty full B lot maybe 2/3’s or less, cars in D and E (easy shuttle stops vs B lot). Big sunny fun day, whats new about that? Saw a number of the “hard” cores having fun on another bad day.

Well--Yes it was worth the price of a lift ticket. The only place that was not worth a repeat was Northway.  Tried the horseshoe chute which was too firm and too scraped. The short hike up Northway Peak yielded better snow but only did it once. We actually did PB skiers right by taking off our skis and down climbing.  The snow out there was a bit better than the left chutes. The real deal was the front side hamster runs, however had to do some stump jumping and last minute hockey stops to avoid rock bands. Only big line was  GV 10:00 on the way to Northway. A Beautiful Spring Skiing Day. Watch out for cops with radar.

We got a lazy start - pulled into the lot (C? The big one on climber's right) around 10:30-ish and were skiing by 11. The lack of lift lines allowed us to tucker our legs out just fine despite the short-ish day. There was nice soft snow in the sun as well as pretty decent soft machine groomed snow in the shade in many places. Definitely exceeded our expectations and none of us felt bad about buying a lift ticket. We did encounter one decent-size lift line at FWex mid-afternoon but we just used that as an excuse to ski to the base and had no real lines after that, even at FQex. Definitely some rocks including tricky ones hiding after having been churned up onto/into moguls on sunny exposures but it was not nearly as bleak as I'd expected based on some reports. I guess it's all about your expectations; mine were quite low.

Watch out for cops with radar.

they were certainly out in force on both the up and down trips yesterday. glad to have the V1, though homeward was slow anyway.