Crystal - 01/28

Nothing like a powder frenzy day! Big early crowd lineup on CHex (and then the Bucket crowd showed up at
the back end making the lineup even bigger). I arrived earlier than normal and still only got third
CHex chair and fourth REX chair. CHex opened on schedule and actually didnt stop on the first load - yee haa.
Riding up REX could see blue sky moving in and first run down SunnySide was in the sun, smooth, untracked
and deep! And that was pretty much the end of the untracked in the core area - ouch. Very efficient fast
crowd. Still could ski nice left over spots, but as the sun warmed up the snow it required staying on the
north facing shady slopes. Both LS and MIFB were probably good early, but turned into pretty nasty
mashed potatoes piled up between the skidded out ice patches. Did BP's and had a few nice turns but
mostly skied up left overs. Tired quads from yesterday and my poor Casacade Powder skiing technique finished
me off extra early. Chair 6 opened close to late normal, but the lineups kept me away, heard the
crowds waiting at the Northway gates where fairly big - thats why nobody was riding REX. Had some fun,
BINX said his first run down the front side of REX was his best untracked deep day this season - was
good but still heavy, would have killed me a few weeks ago.

Other - CB soup of the day was Tomato Bisque, I had a slice of pizza that was good.

Other Other - Parking at this point at Crystal is a mess. I arrived early and got stuck in the C lot..all
of A was reserved for Pay and Carpool parking and when I left both areas were not full and had bad
parking rows. B and C had lots of cars badly parked and not full, but still a lot of folks. Drive early
and drive down early were both pleasant.

Others may disagree due to the new snow stoke, but I give today a 3 out of 5.

No wind today and a mix of light snow flurries, sun, and a couple runs with impacted visibility. Still mostly nice so give it a 1.5 out of 2.

Now for the snow. Yes, it was a foot of new. Yes, there was stoke. Yes, it was 30 degree NW snow, not powder. The first three runs down various lines on the front side were very nice, then it was packed into lumpy unset concrete. The groomers on REX were groomed before most of the snow hit and they quickly turned into lumpy set concrete. So, we spent a lot of the day skiing our various stashes on GV. We did make a trek over to check on C6 after it opened only to find a massive line, so back to GV. Just about the time we were thinking of calling it quits early, Northway opened and we got one very nice untracked line down Paradise Bowl trees. Once onto the runout, things were packing out fast. On the ride up, we noticed a lot of the runs on the north side of the chair were damaged due to patrol work. So, we banked our measly 23K and fought our way off the mountain. 1.5 out of 3 for snow.

More on parking. When we arrived before 8am, they were also flagging 4 person carpools into the "reserved" upper section of C-lot. As we walked up through A-lot, the parking attendant up there couldn't figure out whey there were no 4-person carpools coming up. A real cluster today. Being a guest and parking being a service, I walked into Guest Services to give them some feedback. The nice lady behind the counter listened but didn't commit to telling anybody. When I asked who else I could talk to, she suggested I use the Crystal e-mail link on their website. So, as soon as I got home, I clicked on the link only to be taken too...Guest Services.

Parking was totally screwed up; what is the carpool sign doing in C lot? What a bunch of ignoramuses running the show this morning, that's why I park in D or E. What gives when staff goes through gondi line and tells everyone that upper mountain is closed at 8:30? Most baled to CHEX then gondi opened before 9 . Only 10 chairs on REX beat us up. First 3 runs on Ex were great but as previously stated mashed potato's started around 10. Slid over to NW and waited 5 min. for rope to drop at gate 1, then had multiple face plants after that. Good day especially traffic as everyone was doing the speed limit. A mid-week blessing.