Crystal - 01/04

Another day, a different day as far as conditions - Snow quality, dusting of new (and more in wind loaded areas), boiler plate frozen pretty much everywhere (other than PB), Valley bowl early was mentally challenging, groomers (LS and MIFB) were groomers that were smooth but very firm (glad I have new all mountain skies with edges), lots of places were to nasty to ski till the sun finally started softening some of the southern slopes. As the muscles and brain started working things improved from the worst snow conditions of the season to a fun just nice enough day to have fun. Lots of sun, some winds, cold at times, I never got hot. Fun with Mr and Ms CD mid day till both of our early quitting time (made it past noon). PB was my best off piste, Valley/MIFB was the hamster run of the day - always find at least one. Another fun day...a lot more fun than the Pass was today for the commuter crowd.

Other - Soup at CB lodge was Chicken Noodle (looked good, pizza looked marginal), lack of employees at lots of places - lodges in food service and also lift opps look kinda thin right now.

Other Other - Was mentally into weekday lazy arrival mode...mistake today, barely got into the A lot at 7:45ish, drive up was no clue, pay lot working to weekend sized again, ski racks at the base answered the question! 100's of slalom skis and the base lodge was packed with racers! Ouch. Spent most of the time in CHex line in the quiet waiting for the early opening. Looks like lower Bull/Ferk is not gonna be much of a run till the racer season is over.

A surprising 2 out of 3 day.  Actually, quite a few surprises.  Cleared the 'Claw almost week-end early.  Mt Rainier was obscured by dense dark clouds.  Those don't look good.  Nice drive up without much traffic.  Pull into the parking lot for the first two surprises.  First, Bluebird skies everywhere.  Second, we didn't make it into A lot and parked on the road below the Village Inn.  What the heck?  The pay lot must be huge.  While it was big, free parking had four more rows in it than the massively big pay lot of the holiday week.  Get to the lodge and the ski racks are full of little racer skis and thousands of them in the lodge.  Hmmm, don't remember seeing anything about that on the Crystal events page.  The good news is, they started uploading them before 8:30 for the course on Bull Run.  By 8:40, the line was gone.  Once on the mountain, zero lines except at the peak on GV because the chair is still running at 70% speed.  Also, REX had a spaz attack for 30 minutes that grew the line to a minute or two.  So, deduct .25 for crowds just because they made me walk from below A lot and the new owners still haven't figured out how to keep those two chairs running consistently at speed.

The weather was beautiful today.  Probably the best weather of the season for me.  The light on the mountain was very cool.  Full on 1.

Snow.  The morning groomers were what was expected.  2 - 4 inches on top of groomed ice.  They skied well until the center was scraped down to the ice layer, but the sides skied well all day as the skidded off snow built up there and started blending with the firm layer underneath.  Off piste was less than fun in GV.  But, saw a guy launch big air in Powder Bowl and get to the bottom with maybe 4 turns at speed.  Off to C6,  Campbell Basin had 6 inches of snow that blew around the Bowl and deposited on the far side.  The backside traverse was well covered, and the front side traverse the rest of the way was surprisingling smooth, clear of rocks, and fast.  CB was fun as long as you kept your speed up and didn't sink into the hard layer underneath.  Unfortunately, Powder Bowl was not as good.  Back to groomers until 11:30 when the final two surprises happened.  The new snow had merged well with the firm layer in GV as people skied it and it turned out to be pretty fun.  Then, onto MIFB.  What?  All the direct sunlight had softened it and the snow resembled corn snow.  Fast carving runs actually moving the snow around in almost spray.  Rodent wheel time for the next 90 minutes until around 1 when the sun started down and a thin high atmosphere haze caused things to cool off enough it started re-firming.  Checked the vert.  Passed the CD reference point, so bailed with a nice day under our belts.  I'll be conservative and give the snow a .25 just to come out to an even 2 out of 3 for the day.  But, it was actually better than that for a couple hours.