Crystal - 12/28

A 2.5 out of 3 day. Crowds were lighter than yesterday (until I went through the lodge when I left...yikes!), good visibility most of the day, and a half point deduction for snow lacking the 5 inch refresh of yesterday. Everything with the exception of Employee Housing was packed out. Switch to mogul mode.

Cleared the 'Claw at 6:50 and had to pass a slow moving snow plow (??? no snow anywhere on the road all the way to Crystal) at the Mud Mountain turn off. Never saw anther uphill car until I pulled into A-lot. A very nice drive up with elk sightings at The Dalles campground and again at Alta Crystal. Parked in the third row of free parking, but still in the back of the lot due to the massive pay lot again.

Crystal started the lifts at 8:30 and once again dispersed the crowd around the mountain quickly. C6 opened early, but my run dodging rocks to get over to Campbell Basin wasn't worth it. PB was better, but a rock garden on top. Bear Pits was great as was the aforementioned EH. Spent a lot of the day doing Valley/Berg as both skied nicely. Today, I was chasing ddk instead of the other way around as the quads were burning from yesterday.

Hit a snow storm on the way down at Greenwater with snow piling up on the road. Another 10 miles and pouring rain the rest of the way home.

And way to many more words for the folks up in the far north - Third day is best - body finally starts to work the way its supposed to! Legs don't hurt as much. Ultra early easy drive up, finally got the front side of the cheap parking in A. Kinda quiet early, small CHex lineup for the starting gate, never saw any real lift lines today (though I wouldn't ride some Rex and GVex cycles with CD - single line was faster and very empty).  Grooming on LS and MIFB was pretty nice early today and MIFB held up primo all day (short day, ultra short day, made it into the afternoon at least - ouch?). Bounced around from PB/BP's to one Doorish run, GV Bowl pretty fun packed pow with great vis, lots of BP's runs again cause the vis was great, actually the vis was pretty happy big early in the morning, lots of rocks on top of The Queen, heard south bound was nasty, getting into PB was nasty enough for me.  Finally bumped into CD and pretty much put the gas to the peddle, GV Bowl, Grubstake!, BP's, EH! Two days in a row! World record for me - maybe? (I still hate I5 - need to wax the skis), pounding the hamster laps, ended up being able to leave based on the vert o-meter and cuase it was getting fuzzier on the vis o-meter.  Fun day, First no CB lodge today for me, so no idea what the soup was, but I can imagine it was the Triple C again. Lodge at the base was a total disaster of a crowd when I passed through. Thanks CD for a fine day.

Other - Pay lot made and impressive effort filling up today! B,C,D and I spaced out on the cell phone about how massively full the F lot was. Big crowd around, not many bad lift lines, fun day and with a little luck (or sadness) it was the last day for the Rock Coombas this season.  Had many to many wacky slow downs on the sometimes weird fast parts - especially the logging truck that had a hard time getting much over 40ish

Crowd: 1.0
This got extra points because the longest line we waited in all day was less than five minutes. Not bad for Friday of Christmas week.
Visibility: 0.7.
It started out good, but got worse later in the day, and the light was pretty flat.
Snow:  0.8.
It was pretty good most places, not bad, not really good, just pretty good.

I agree with CD. 2.5/3

The top of six sucks.  . Got a big 18 inch gouge on an unseen rock.