Crystal - 04/11

Short report – Big sun early, light crowd early, coolish early, beginnings or SE winds early – perception was that the east winds were blowing pretty big today… Great groomers early, variable off piste while poking around early, GV Bowl by far the best non hiking north facing slopes I checked out…

Lots more words – Arrived later than normal to the best parking I’ve had since early December. Very small pay lot (and not full when I left), fair early crowd waiting for the early up load – early opening streak has ended (not as bad as Stevens…but…), Great early runs down GV Bowl (all day!) and screamers down MIFB (all day!). Light enough crowds and with the east winds MIFB never got bad. But other southern aspects were definitely challenged on getting prime soft – dang sad! Big vert, lots of happy folks, REX had another fairly big stop early afternoon (heard it happened yesterday also), big fire power brains showed up to get it running again…worked great after the reset for the rest of my day. Fun day, fun screamer runs, fun beat myself up nasty runs checking for the big soft melt…Coombas were fired up all day and my brain managed to keep up with them….Hiking PB would have been awesome…the single tracks early morning down Kempers looked pretty sweet…and gotta say if HC had been running…I might have hiked the King! – it looked primo! Where was everyone today? Golfing? Mowing the grass?

Other – No soup at CB lodge…just cookies and beer…as noted Pay lot was small and not full when I left…spaced on the rest of the parking on the mountain – sorry…but never had a lift line and had a lot of happy social conversations…Only 13 days left at Crystal…

Beautiful weather with a pesky thaw-hindering east wind. Valley Bowl skied great and Powder Bowl woulda been the place to be if opened. The wind blew fine refills up the Valley. And you had your pick of icy Berger or icy Luckyshot (got boring fast). The rest of the off-piste was frozen glop. Bear Pits showed promise, but needed 10 degrees that the east wind cancelled. Did my best to enjoy the crunchies as I poked around. At 11:45 high overcast moved in and cooled the slight warming. And Rex broke - 15 minutes of down time and with the electricians still scrambling, I pulled the plug.

Ken

We had a great day. Lots of good skiing to be found. The right side of lucky shot off the groomed, right side of snorting elk and the right side of the main gut down green Valley. The best was as DDK  mentioned, the Gondy face of Green Valley to anywhere along West Face. Little runs that we're good were Powder Pass trees, Frisco to old chair five
Lift line and Ann's run.  Top to bottom runs were very good as both lower Ferks and Deer Fly were nice spring snow.  Our last run of the day was a GV to Kelly's gap to lower E which was really good all the way down.