Crystal 02/03

Ski Report - Morning started with broken clouds, some sun, pleasant temps and light crowd participation.  Early groomers off of REX very nice and fast and carveable.  Increased my hamster world by skiing a number of runs in the Valley - way far north to Snorting Elk bowl and way south to Bearpits.  Valley runs were very nice, including one of my fav runs - KC (Kens Collarbone), nice big bumps through the trees with icy troughs and soft tops of bumps - its right next to Anns and Sandys and Dans runs?  HUH?  Bearpits was a bit of a challenge - definitely icy underneath with deep noisy left over pow.... very entertaining getting through the broken trees at the very bottom from the PB tree removal slide.... bottom of Bearpits has gotten lots of tree slide removal over the years.  Sadly, the lowland fog blew up towards Crystal and by 10:30 the vis was disappearing.  So headed over to FQex to check out things - but the fog blew in over there also....so had an early lunch break at CB lodge.  When I headed out the vis was even worse, tried a blind run down LS and that ended up being enough for the day.    Looked really nice down low on CHex, SlowSilver and Disco for vis. 

Other - CB lodge finally had Chicken Noodle soup and it was very good (had to save my Hess sandwich for tomorrow).  Lodge was pretty empty early.  No lift lines to speak of.  Special folks parking in the front of A lot was badly parked and full, rest of A maybe half, Carpool lot was 98% empty as usual, rest of C working on full, B over half full, cars in D and that was about it - so a few folks showed up today.  All the lifts (other than the useless Gold Hills lift) were open today.  Drive up and down at cruise control speed, saw my first elk (rodent!) in a long time down by the Alta Crystal resort.   Fun day would have been better and longer if the vis had held up on the upper mountain.