Crystal - 12/11

Woooo  Hooo, Yee Haa. Today was a very nice day at Crystal!  More to follow....And the rest of the story (from my view point – oh no)…Arrived way to early expecting a frenzy.  It did get busy in the bucket line, noticed CHex line was very happy sized early, on my ride up (I wouldn’t have gotten into the back end of the Gondy line today).  Everything up top was smooth as a baby’s (you know what). But gotta say as I expected where the winds hit hard it was nice and icy boiler plate and were the slopes got loaded or behind some blocking trees it was very nice and deep.  Small crowd managed to chew up every thing pretty fast as usual, but with a surprisingly small crowd the chewing up went on and on.  Valley early was pretty nice – Grubstake (aaahhh), Ann’s run (ouch fun), anywhere in the center of the upper bowl was very good.  SunnySide sucked me in I don’t know how many times today – icy spots, but once you knew where they were it was a nice packed cut up powder fun free fall.  Cycled through Chair 6 area late morning – nice no lines, good things to be found in Campbell Basin and PB was very very doable.  Finished the day riding an empty REX till my legs started whining.  Great Friday all in all.

Other – Pay lot to big as usual, but C was pretty full and B had a lot of widely spaced rows past the shuttle stop.  Had started hearing rumors yesterday and more this morning, so the anticipation about my pass through CB lodge was intense!  And yes praise the lord – CHICKEN NOODLE SOUP!  And it was very good, lots of noodles and vegys and chicken.  Yee Haa. 

Other other – Power was finally restored early afternoon to the mountain, got all the lifts running at speed, made riding REX much nicer.  No lift lines that I noticed when I was near them.  Fun day…looking forward to what ever happens after the next big wind storm tomorrow.

Ditto ddk's report.  Additional nice runs included Breakover, Memorial Forest and up high on the ridge to the right of Iceberg, then a drop into the bottom of M Forest.  Coverage is excellent…maybe better than all of last year.  Not a rock ding today and that included many laps on the Campbell Basin side of C6 as well as a very nice run down Powder Bowl.  Looks like lots more snow coming over the week-end.  Wooohoooo!

Looks like we finally have a ski season in progress. I thought the Frenzy would be in full effect, but I took it casual and didn’t sit in the Gondy line for 2 hours. An easy upload on a slow, diesel “saving fuel” chair gave lots of time to scope the untracked Frontside (they say the power’s back on…still no telemetry). After an hour of windblown-to-boot-top pow, the long forgotten pow-grins were in place. A nice late lunch break, no soup, on Campbell Basin kept things going and Powder Bowl provided dessert. Coverage is good other than the usual rocky transitions. Cut up snow interspersed with a few rain-crust patches on Grubstake to Ann’s run finished up the afternoon and my legs. An awesome day and looks good for a windy (close the upper mountain again?) snowy weekend prepping for monday’s lull in the action.

Ken
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I don't get to Crystal much: thanks Duncan for the inspiration. In contrast to some of the comments and predictions here, everything about the day was great. Crowds were certainly not a problem. Max wait 5 min, mostly ski-on. 99% of the guests were polite and friendly and liftline behavior was fine. I noticed a lot of backpacks on the pegs outside of the midway lodge It was nice to see that folks are trusting others not to take their stuff. I lost a backpack there once about 10 years ago. Most of all the mountain was in great shape. The cut powder piles stayed good all day. After years of favoring the more northern resorts near the Seattle metro area now I see the potential for Crystal.

sounds good