Crystal - 03/29 Powder Frenzy

Ski Report - Another Monday, not many left, another powder day and a early morning frenzy with all the Alpy folks(?) arriving extra early.  Pretty early fair sized crowd for CHex during the late season.  Lucky REX was loading right from the start, helped minimize the early morning glut.  Snow was deep,  vis was iffy in places, front side of REX still had a firm frozen base under the new - glad I brought out the Coombas today.  Even with the cold temps and winds up top at times, the south facing snow felt like it was getting heavier all morning.  Ch6 opened extra early and I had a nice deep snow run with no vis - did one late morning with better vis and it was very nice.  Crowds not to painful, but there were line ups on REX and FQex - I would assume GVex was similar during the 10am rush hour. Vis was greatly improving when I left.  Snow pack is still getting deeper - check out the sign at the top of MIFB!  Gotta be 10 ft or so.  Fun day, but powder frenzy days are always a challenge. 

Other - Had a quick pepperoni pizza with sriacha sauce and parmesan (very tasty).  Pay lot when I left looked at least 3/4, B and C full to the max as was D and E, with cars starting to park in H lot.   Drive up was nice except for the Blvd which was a sheet of bouncy ice - nice when your following a sports car with bad tires (I heard him later say).  Drive down was easy and  pleasant on snow free roads - mostly bare and dry.  Only noticed one elk this morning. 
 

The powder pigs were out in force and the lift lines we're everywhere. We waited in a 10 minute line on chair six for our second run and it was way longer than that when we boarded the chair. Green valley during the 1030+ hour had at least a 10 to 15 minute line. Most of which were waiting for Northway to open. We did one run on Northway right after it opened and the line was just below  the corner.  When we got on that chair the line was up around the corner.  Rex had at least a 10 minute line when we rode it after coming down Powder Bowl leaving chair 6.
So it was a quality over quantity day. There were spots where are you bottomed out on the ice crust layer but most of the places we skied were bottomless at least for part of the run.  It stayed cloudy pretty much all day with the fog kind of drifting in and out so for a few runs we had to alter our track because of the flat light.  As usual the lines mellowed out after 12 o'clock.  In spite of all the powder pigs it was a very fun day. This was our third powder day in a row.  What a grand March.