Crystal - 04/06

Early/late report – quit skiing around 1pm, spent to much social time at the base with a lot of the locals, till they went to ski another run and I drove away…Pretty dicey going up this morning, to much info, 3+ new, fairly warm temps, bad fuzzy pics from REX cam, it was a Sunday ( crowds? ), snowing/preciping, looked like some winds? Oh well not many regular ski season Sundays left, what else would I do – mow the grass? Arrived early to a very big Pay Lot, very grey conditions and lots of misty wet stuff coming out of the clouds. Pretty much the same conditions for the first hour of skiing, lots of wiper action on the goggles and some marginal vis early. Snow was nice, groomers were nice early just could not see them….but lucky hamster world came back, vis improved, fog got drier (? At least no more wiping action required). Sun poked out on top of REX, kept sucking me into the Valley bowl – skied nice, looked like crap! Started doing some front side runs of REX from the Doors to SunnySide to Memorial – looked like even worse crap but the COOMBAS!!! Seemed to like it okay. Should have done those runs from the start, by the time I did it was already heading to the bad side of sticky heavy mucky nasty. Best Hamster run was every time GV Bowl was in the sun (sucked in way to many times) and MiddleIceFerkBerg. When the vis was on, it was fun and carving. No crowds, no lift lines, not many folks on the slopes. Was nice a few times and skied with some very nice people ( the beer at the base was very nice! Thanks John! )

Other – BIG NEWS! CB lodge had Chick Noodle today and it was very good, and the rumor is I’ll be eating a lot of it for the rest of the CB lodge season…dang oh me! Other other lots of the lower mountain off piste areas were very very sticky ( rubbed some wax on mid day and it helped for a few runs). Sticky-oh-meter was moving up REX all morning but things seemed to get a little better as the grey-oh-meter increased late. Ended the day with a nice social beer on the base deck with lots of happy folks. Pay lot not full of pay lot folks, some cars in C lot to the shuttle stop, a few rows in B…season is definitely over for most folks. So sad, so nice for me!

lets start with the phrase,"the fog got drier", it takes me back to the time DDK coined the term,"nice rain" .Today was worst first run of this calendar year.You could not see the ridges in groomed,combine that with freezing rain on your goggles and your totally blind.This is the reason the,"nice rain" was not included in the above report.On top of that on my first run to the base it was already sticky just below iceberg gulch.By the way that was my first run 9:09 sticky at the base.9:19 sticky at the base of Rex........10:19 oh my gosh.....sticky from Powder Pass down.Luckily , just like day the term,"nice rain" was first introduced to the TAY faithful ,IT WAS still good in Green Valley. I have skied more Green Valley this year than the rest of my life combined............Cash skied great in the morning....till noonish, great spring Pow, a good day on the back,but not the front..............really could of used chair 6 and southback this weekend.................I will not sugar coat the end of this post with a phrase like "the fog got drier" I'll stick a little closer to the truth with,' better luck next year'.........

Headed to Whistler to stretch my legs a bit, sounds like we made the right choice. The cache was good yesterday with eskinmo but temps were warming by later in the day. See you all next week!

Headed to Joshua Tree, to stretch my arms abit, I think it's a good call.See you next week