Crystal Tues Dec 6

Arrived 8:30am, parked up close, walked onto gondola -- only to find the hill pretty much socked in with thick fog all day below the summit. The big mountain was out, above the fog, and we clicked the obligatory selfie. We poked around here and there and found nice cut snow (especially north facing) in the valley, snort, kelly's, deerfly and lower bull. Yet, it was kinda tough to let it rip if you couldn't see more than a few turns down the hill.

A nice surprise was some chain saw action atop the entrance to NET/TLC. While C6 was running, we didn't see anybody on the chair all day. Based on CD's report from Monday about the crappy exit atop C6, we didn't venture up to Campbill Basin, South or into PB. Some nice turns were found out through the gate beyond C6 -- with a much improved runout from DF. The base is getting deeper and the Elizabeth Creek drainage was fun as we found new ways to navigate the downed trees from the wind storm 2 Saturdays ago. 

Also much improved was the runout at the bottom of Bear Pits. The resort cleaned up the debris from last year's avalanche that destroyed the Right Lucky Shot Trees -- and the rope line was moved uphill. Typically you would worry about getting stuck at the lake -- but the resort ran some heavy equipment out to improve the runout -- and it was groomed out a tad -- never seen that before.

Not too many skiers/boarders out today. The restaurants were closed but we were able to brown bag inside Campbell Lodge where the water filter remains clogged a tad. Some activity was noted in the kitchen and the menus were up on some new big monitors.

But the big win today was the extensive grooming that the resort laid down last night. Prolly groomed as much as they could -- but no evidence of cinching yet as MFerks, Blazing Elk and Rolling Knolls had yet to be smoothed out. All in all, the grooming was judged to be very good. Kudos!