Crystal - 01/16/15 First Big Pow Day

Check check???? Again cant say why a post a little while ago did not work....my pattern is the same, oh well - the rest of the report? Biggest day of 2015…biggest early crowd and lots of folks that have been doing chores for a few weeks now, biggest Blue Bird morning – before the lifts started loading…biggest frenzy for the first 45 minutes and then ??? Casual world kicked in. Still plenty of “smart” lines still around, early big clear went to lots of blowing around clouds. In and out and by noon pretty much all out with good vis. To much early sun and heat baked the southern exposures. North facing was happy and deep packed pow all day. GV Bowl and most of PB pretty prime (skier right). Think the groomers early might have been nice – didn’t really notice…did notice that anything below the bottom of REX was pretty ugly nasty ice skating quality (where it was groomed when I left). Fun Day. Big Day. Biggest powder day or 2015! And it was worth standing in line this morning for it…. Lots of hard core folks looking for that perfect pow day….think everyone had some nice turns somewhere.

Other – Soup at CB lodge was Tomato (again….left over Wednesday?). Pay lot looked like it got kinda full. Lots of buses late for the ski school. Lots of cars in C lot, B lot was widely spaced back to the shuttle stop….so there most have been a lot of folks on the mountain. Didn’t notice any lift lines. South opened around 12:30 – probably good in lost of places.

Definitely exceeded my expectations. Really good snow and coverage early. As DDK mentioned the sun really baked south facing slopes so by mid morning they were getting soft/gloppy. Aside from the wait for opening the only "line" I came across all day was on Chair 6 at about 11am when people seemed to realise that area was open (I was skiing there with next to no one at 10 am:). Top of 6 passage was quite easy for the first few hrs with the new snow. But by noon you really had to be careful getting down the first few turns.

Had some great runs in the Southback when it opened after noon. Lots of Abasin/King variations down through Damn Fine Trees to the lake and out. Stayed away from Silver Basin for fear of the previously mentioned sun warming. Rarely saw a soul while I was skiing out there.

Silver Basin was Great!

2nd!

Big day. First day up, late start. Got all the left overs. Still great to be up in the mountain no matter what the conditions. Tried my new Motorola G phone camera from Republic Wireless.

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