Crystal - Jan 19, 2022

Weird day.  Started with the drive up.  Overcast and dry at my house, raining in the 'Claw, then snowing hard right after the Mud Mountain straight away with white roads.  After passing through Greenwater, drove into blue bird skies which held for most of the day at Crystal.  It was on the cold side, but winds were light and there was 4" new light snow.  Crystal issued a late powder alert (huh?????) which brought the hordes up around 10am.  As a result, A-lot was almost full, as was B and C lot.  While some of the usual groomers runs were crowded with people, never a lift line.  The powder alert was extremely optimistic on Crystal's part.  Last night's cold temps froze the base layer chunks and then put a nice light 4" of new snow on top, just enough to hide all the chicken heads, avie debris, etc.  On Tuesday, the chicken heads would shear off when hit with enough force, today they stayed put.  Occasionally, we found some nice stashes of powder, but it would only last for several turns before hitting the crud underneath.  The groomers today quickly got scraped down to chattery hardback.  We did our best to ski in the new snow and with tomorrow's forecast sun and warming, things should be better...in the early afternoon.  Until then, Valley Valley is pretty good as is Kelly's Gap, but Ann's run, not so much.

And many to more words about today (special note the opinions of Kelly's Gap...ha ha)

Ski Report -  Big! Big Sun! Big Cold (for old me), Big Blue Bird Sky's, and for a Thursday a fairly big crowd...no real lift lines, though early morning CHex lineup was biggish...Powder Alert from the Powder Puba?  Regardless, about that, the groomers early off of REX (LS and MIFB!) were very nice...I love seeing diamonds in the snow...especially my first of many runs down MIFB.   Twas another Hamster Heaven kinda day mostly.... GV Bowl to MIFB - repeat!  #1 showed up at REX kinda early do to stop and go FQex operations.... but that just made her day bigger! Till she made me (whining and moaning) do Kellys Gap...probably okay off piste, but what about the not so obvious avie bolders from Rock Face...I've walked the road in summer during the Crystal cleanup the slopes functions...it's a long walk...it's also almost painful skiing the road to the base...Lots of sun today, another day increasing my STD - VD numbers (Season To Date  Vertical Day)...Yee Haa...I love skiing. Both of us had a great day and I'm looking forward to being totally selfish tomorrow - #1's day off...

Other - Popped into CB lodge fora short break and it was, very busy after we arrived.  Soup was Chicken Rice Veggy Medly with real roasted garlic pieces...expensive as usual but very good.  Views of the King were big.  All the regulars were mostly gone heading to the Ancient Skiers party at Sun Valley - might have to go next year.

Other Other - Drive up this morning was very pleasant till the snowstorm from Mud Mt to past the Ranch area....ouch!....especially being behind a garbage truck...  Parking?  Lordy the Special folks area was not overwhelmed, but the rest of A lot was almost full???  And B and C (with some very wide spaces between rows) were both pushing full....Big  crowd for some random Thursday in January.  Drive down good till we ran into a group of wimps following an even bigger wimp.... still pleasant on the dry pavement in the sun.

Our solution to avoiding the hidden avy debris (e.g. under rockface) was to avoid skiing the avy debris. BP held up early before the solar radiation did its thing. While GV and shaded Snort was nice, the big snow was out south. For the 3 times up c6, we turned left and then either accessed the west chutes of Powder Bowl (very nice) or the back traverse out to ABasin. This traverse is the smoothest all season -- easy peasy all the way. Even nicer turns were found in DFF as the south trees held the goods. The Never Ending Trail into the ELake environs was super fun. 16F and mostly bluebird -- and for once the Crystal mountain report was spot on as it was very much a sleeper top-to-bottom powder day.