Crystal - 03/05

Short Report - Bonus Monday Powder day (especially since not many hard core powder hounds showed up today), very nice quality and very nice and deep in lots of places, ultra end of season light crowd, vis not always prime early to mid day in places, but very nice sun breaks early to mid afternoon...wish I was willing to ski to closing, would have been very good. Snow quality mighty happy most places I went (though limited places today).

Long Wordy Report - Arrived early after a causal drive (did see a big bull elk with a very big rack by Ranger Creek - been a while since we've seen one of the big boys). Nice quiet lodge (except for the big group of Ladies prepping for a day of guided ski instruction). Small early lineup for CHex - though there was some over hyped folks trying to 5 pack REX....as noted vis was in an out in some places most of the morning, but the early groomers were sweet and the snow quality was very nice. Best today was again PB/BP's for my limited time solo....Did ski some nice runs with #1 - she was having a great morning with Ms Ferk and Kimi (sp? Gotta ask sometime). #1 and I had some very nice runs on the empty slopes early afternoon. Never stood in a lift line anywhere. Only place I noticed any rocks was at the top of Chair 6 and those are not really worth thinking about.

Other - Soup was another bonus at CB lodge...Chicken Noodle (was wanting the meatball pizza but both would have been to much food). Pay lot was wrong day wrong season big and very not close anywhere near used. Not many folks parked in B or C. Drive down was very pleasantly empty and no road repair work today. Great day, Great snow, Great Monday end of season conditions....Quit kinda early to save some muscle for tomorrow....

Always tough following a DDK report.... How do I put this? I beg to differ. Does that work?

It was a really gray day. Visibility sucked south of Green Valley and above 5,500'. Expecting some new over last friday's packed pow, we were disappointed. Everything that got sun was 4-6" over nasty frozen mank. Iceberg and Luckyshot were new over smoothly groomed ice. We poked around in the fog, occasionally falling, as you couldn't see the slope. A blind traverse to Bear Pits found visibility and some nice new, 6-12", but Bear Pits has been skied into big, swoopy, icy, side-to-side bumps, almost traverses, that make fall line skiing.... not fun. Outer Ferk's was the same. We saw some people come out of the Powder Bowl mist and say the vis was zero, so we stayed away. Green Valley, in a short visibility window, was soft new snow over 100 firm traverse lines. Snorting Elk had nice smooth new snow over unseen bumps. Our run-of-the-day was S-Elk-Sluiceway-Berry Patch-Lower E as you could see, there was a foot of new, and the lower angle made it possible to float over the crunch especially in the trees. Upper Exterminator wasn't worth the 4 nice turns into Eagles Drop.

Ken
+

It was a day of great change!

In the AM, the 6-8 inches of fresh light powder on top of the firm base were delightful on the lower moderate slopes.
It was mostly a foggy white out on the upper mountain.
The lower slopes had good visibility and areas of soft untracked snow to be sniffed out.

There was a transition around noon. After the "soup".

The gaps in the clouds began to open up. They became big.
The skiing kept getting better and better each run, it was at it's best at the closing bell!
The visability was fantastic, there were still pockets of powder, and the place was deserted!

It was a day of great change!

In the AM, the 6-8 inches of fresh light powder on top of the firm base were delightful on the lower moderate slopes.
It was mostly a foggy white out on the upper mountain.
The lower slopes had good visibility and areas of soft untracked snow to be sniffed out.

There was a transition around noon. After the "soup".

The gaps in the clouds began to open up. They became big.
The skiing kept getting better and better each run, it was at it's best at the closing bell!
The visability was fantastic, there were still pockets of powder, and the place was deserted!

NICE! Congrats!