Crystal - 12/21

A surprise 2 out of 3 day. Crowds were light without a lift line all day, even on the gondie after the initial glut. .5 out of 1 for weather. Jeez it was cold today with winds and snow all morning. Definitely needed another base layer I didn't have. The weather actually drove us into Campbell Basin lodge at 10:30 for a quick warm-up. While there, checked out the menu. BLT's are back after a year absence! Will have to get one sometime this year when I actually go in for lunch. Anyway, the weather never really affected visibility where I was skiing and it cleared around noon, but remained cold. As for snow, Crystal did an excellent job grooming the new snow into the frozen layer left from yesterday's rain. The groomers were nice and since I retired the rock skis after Wednesday, sharp edges were an added bonus. Off piste, GV bowl was good. Not great like it's been, but I've skied it much worse. GV to Berg was our go-to run for a lot of today. Our no-go-to run was Deerfly after a single run down it. I didn't make it up to Chair 6 due to the cold temps and lazy brain today. Hopefully, others will post about it.

As we drove out, ski patrol closed the blvd for a couple minutes at Employee Housing while they blasted an avalanche up above. Tons of snow up there on an unstable layer from November.

And another view and more info (ps thought you had bailed early CD, must just missed you a couple of times)...anyway - Aaaahhhhh...Interesting day, easy drive up, holiday sized Pay lot, newish CHex lift op, very new early morning lift op/ticket checker lineup/start time screwup - hope it was a one time process, otherwise might have to make some suggestions about the process...oh well once I got off CHex and onto REX didn't have to think about that again. Kinda nasty early, snowing, windy, cold, freezing mist on goggles at times, icy grooming, frozen lumps where I skied early...Looked like it was gonna be a tough day! But a early lunch break at CB lodge - bumped into a friend, clouds parted, winds slowed down, brain started working - game on. PB, PB, GV, MIFB, SS, SS, Door, SS, SS, MIFB repeat repeat ouch oh so much fun in the sun to filtered sun, no lift lines (actually there were no lift lines all day) Wish I had done SunnySide earlier in the day, still lots of soft left overs that carved nice (if kinda funny crunchy noisy at times). This afternoon made the day go from a 1 to a 3 (based on the Quick Foot and CD scale). Should still be fun tomorrow - might have to go - coverage is great, top of PB was great left over pow (Crystal just needs an extra 1k elevation).

Other - Soup at CB lodge was Chicken Noodle (again!), no pizza (?).

Other Other - Pay lot as noted was big and not full, lots of the rest of A lot behind where I parked was gone by the time I left, C maybe 3/4 and B had some wacky wide weird parking going on. Drive was easy and at speed.

Pretty fun day - no marketing required. Big blasting out North, was supposed to be a Helli today, but might not have happened do to the early clouds and the intermittent low fog this afternoon.

Big PS - Pay attention to the Doors area...massive tree thinning this summer, whole new world in the early Doors area.

and yet another view....the only run that was what your hoping for was to be in the first group down iceberg,5 inches on the groomed....skied great .........if you didn't ski today, don't worry about it. Yep , you could "make the best of it " and hunt and peck. There was some good Pow Turns on 6 , but not a whole run worth.....this was a Crustal Mountain day....Not super loud snow , but that was only because of the 3-5 on top....the groomers were ok,all 4 of them.............other news forget about skiing the backcountry , it's near bullet proof , you can drive on it..in order to find the weak layer , I would suggest hiring a west texas fracking crew....rain/wind crust...