Crystal 12/18

The hordes hit the mountain today. Biggest crowd I've personally seen in the last couple seasons. The pay parking guy was ready. The Marketing department was ready. The mountain operations were not. Crystal struggled with an upper mountain wind hold at opening, plus a lot of late avalanche control. When they finally got the upper mountain open at 10, it was chaos. There was no line control and the line on REX at opening was 40 - 50 people wide. Also, the only grooming that was done was on the runs on Forest Queen and Discovery…nothing in Green Valley or REX. The deep snow they received over night was mostly heavy with a good rain crust below 5500 feet. This caused most of the mountain to pack into a hard lumpy surface that was harder for me to ski then any mogul field. There were pockets of good snow. Most of the front side skied well as long as you hit the untracked which lasted like 5 minutes. Anything skied set up. All of C6 was excellent due to the higher elevation, but again with no line control and a line 30 people wide, the 15 - 20 minute wait took the fun out of the short runs. The line on C6 stayed very long the entire time we were on the mountain. By 11:30, the REX line had become relatively quick, so we found our solace in Bear Pits which skied nicely until the lower rain crusted portions. We ended up quitting early with only half the vert we got on Wednesday, which was a much better day. The one big positive today is all the new heavy snow was perfect for building a longer term base.

On a side note, I'm wondering if Crystal is suffering from a lack of available workforce this year. The grooming hasn't been up to standard even with the fabulous base. Have they groomed Iceberg once? And, the general operation of the place seems in disarray. I hope they pull it together before the big holiday crowds hit. To be fair, I'm sure it was a challenging day to try and get the resort open. Just didn't appear that there was any sort of master plan to accomplish it.

thanks for the report. "My root canal today was not so bad", he said contrastingly.

Moments of glory (it took awhile to get the legs in gear after each long lift line) faded, at I’ll say, 5,600 feet when you hit the rain crust. Today we’ll give to the hordes, hope they get it out of their system soon. Chair Six and Green Valley were above the heavy layer. Six was a second run no-go due to 20 minute line. GV was cut up by some were’s-the-line-gone thrashers and hard to manage. Upper Northway will be off the hook tomorrow, Lower NW will be crusty hell to pay. The rest, plus 1 to CD’s report.

Alex, I’d like to buy some lift line control. (All you unemployed skiers, Crystal’s looking for workers).

Ken
+

I am so glad I stayed home. Thank goodness for the NWAC and Crystal webs sites. The REX webcam showed the horde down below which made my choice to not go vastly easier. In days gone by the phone snow line would have said" It's been snowing for 2 days and conditions are excellent". No mention of wind or the changing temperatures. At least we got an great base started.

Man, you guys are grouchy.

I'm sure the delayed opening was due to the massive and widespread avalanche activity. AC work doesn't start until sunrise. When is that this time of year?

The line at 6 was long but I guess that's due to the fact that other people like to ski too.

What else were you complaining about? Oh yeah, the snow was too heavy... in the Cascades... south of I90.

Well put SW, I was thinking the same thing and throw in a tweaked knee on Mago's and a I think I'm hurt in the Meadow and now you have 4- 6 Red Jackets out of the Avi loop..............I think the Chet Crew were doing the Avi routes and were seeing stuff go and that takes time to make sure it's safe for all of us standing at the rope line asking all the "Dude" questions, "Like" dude is it open yet dude? it's snow ski it, No such thing as bad snow, only bad skiers....the Red Coats bust their asses to get shit open, they want us to cut up the snow pack...so Back off and have some fun, it's white!