Crystal - 12/28

Might have only started with 3” new yesterday…but everything I heard the day just kept getting better and deeper…and the bonus? The 12+ and a lot deeper new today with big ultra blue sky, see everywhere views (when I remembered to look), the perfect Rocky Mountain quality smoke snow, the pretty close to go anywhere conditions (still some iffy spots….only negative was the masses of humanity showed up today….not really January weekend crowds, but there were a lot of folks. Early morning runs great, late morning left overs in the core area still very nice pillows, the sun started to lump up some of the sunny warm exposures. Great day…there will be lots of “big” reports about today.

Other – Didn’t check for the soups..no time…Easy drive up extra early...all the lots looked max full, saw lots of walkers in the Gondy line. Drive down after a slow Blvd drive was easy and fast. Brought out the new Coombas today and they were particularly happy!

Arrived at the lot at 7:35 and what's this? Parking along the road below A lot. Oh boy, gonna be crowded. And, the hordes did come out. Just masses of humanity around any of the lodge areas. I think it did equal a big January week-end crowd. But, as ddk said, great snow, great bluebird sky, great day on the mountain finding the lifts with the shortest lines. Hit that pretty good today with many early runs on Northway with no lines and lots of pow. When the line got long around 11, we left and did a run down Employee Housing. That was fun! Hit C6 at lunch with relatively short lines and had quite a bit of fun there, then a PB to BP for many laps of REX where the lunch and post lunch crowd left fairly short lines. A really great day which ended with another EH out to the bottom.

Traffic report: Leaving Enumclaw at 6:50, traffic was a very consistent 52 MPH. Nice. The commute down fluctuated quite a bit between 40 and 55, but considering the number of cars on the road, quite good. Oh, I'm pretty sure Crystal was having to give out free ski vouchers today as every lot was stuffed full including F lot, plus cars parked along the blvd.

Great fun, soft, cold day for sure. The big crowds were on FQ and Gondy so other lifts were pretty good all day.
Heard that cars were being turned around at 10:30. Get there early!
Traffic report: 25mph down the Blvd but he parked at 410; and then more-or-less speed limit the rest of the way.

Can’t add much other than WOOOOHOOOO. Odd how some of these big crowd days leave us acres of untracked. Kudos to Ski Patrol for getting everything opened at 8:55 - and Crystal for loading the chairs at 8:30. Managed the crowd right and hardly waited in line. Managed the runs right and skied first tracks for 2 hours, then most excellent cut pow on Employee Housing. Effortless skiing till day’s end with the least tired legs and biggest grins. Nothing’s left of the untracked (didn’t try Southback) and the light snow/cold temps didn’t pack down over the rocky spots. Top of Six is terrible for the first 50 vert. feet. Northway Gate 3 the same. The cut new will be great if the temps stay cool, only some minor thickening in the sun. I counted a thousand motorhome, I think; it’ll be busy the next 4 days.

Traffic report - My buds kept getting in front of me blowing snow all up in my vis.

Ken
+

...a TREE-mendous day with true top to bottom skiing...no lift lines at northway, and was never affected by the rumored crowds...brand X+Y was spooky deep with lots of untracked...maybe it's just me, but i'm noticing more and more of "suffocation hazard" signage popping up around the resort...i must say that today's conditions were very reliable for the most part...used my powder cords all day long (kinda like my linus blankie) as we slashed our way through the remote areas of crystal's north sidecountry...

...continued my ongoing exploration through the messed up entry-thru-gate3...found an interesting cornice (with grey snow underneath) located skiers right of the big rock atop upper paradise bowl...yikes! had to pull some tricks out of the bag in order to maintain respectability in these double diamond trees and chutes...left angle trees was effortless all the way to the road and the easy pickup at lot E by the cattle trailer...

...also noticed an open gate to either 'hole-in-the-wall' or the closed (?) waterfall area, this gate was just off the choke point of kelly's gap road (north of rockface)...perhaps a reader of this thread could enlighten me...seems that you could take right angle around the big rock and then slip back left into left angle trees...it was one of those days where you could go wherever you wanted, as the cold snow made turns quite easy!..

...ditto the aforementioned rocks atop c6, if there ever was a need for a snow-making device, atop c6 would get my vote...once past those slip-turns-from-hell, we found outstanding turns through sign-line and shot 2 -- still hard to get used to the 'meadows-of-bear-pits', but alas those 100 trees are indeed missing...at 2:30 pm patrol was erecting fence barriers atop c6 to direct traffic and preserve what can be preserved...have never seen that ever...

...managed 2 great runs through the elizabeth creek drainage...WOW!!!...really nice, light, predictable snow that should stay that way all week

...and of course the ride out of the parking lot sucked, but the good news was that I5 was free of congestion all the way back to the greenlake park n ride..

...all all the big days so far this season, today stood out as #2 (with #1 being of course the epic sunday of december 4, 2016)...

Ultra bluebird day
Definitely the busiest I've seen here in my new incarnation as a weekday skier, but what do we expect for the holiday? There were plenty of cautious drivers on the ride up, and some elk on the way down.
We found fine tree skiing long after the more open runs were gobbled up.