Powder day! Until it wasn't. Drove up extra early with lot's of people in front of me and parked several rows back in the princess lot. Line on Chinook was fairly long, but only 5 - 10 minutes once they started loading. Blue skies, cold temperatures (for a while), and over a foot of new light powder. First run down chairline excellent down to a 5 minute line on Rex. But kudos to Crystal...they opened both Northway and C6 at 9am and the crowds quickly dispersed around the mountain. No more lines. Second run for me was the best of the day down an untracked Bear Pits far left side. Face shots all the way down. After that, it was a blur from Powder Bowl to Northway Peak. By 11am, it got warm and anything in the sun packed out hard into big lumps. The groomers had so much snow on them after they were groomed, they ended up with bigger bumps than off-piste. So, north facing off-piste was the place to be. By 1pm, we had to ski too many ugly groomers to get to the good snow, so bailed. Traffic down was almost as bad as traffic up.
On a side note, someone got really hurt on C6 looker's left of the chairline just below the rock band towards the top. Ski patrol had to dig out a ledge for the Toboggan and held it in place with their skis stuck in the snow. Around 10 patrol working on the rescue on a really difficult part of the mountain. 30 minutes after we left that side of the mountain, a helicopter came in to airlift the injured person out. Hope they're going to be OK. Amazing to see patrol working on someone in really difficult terrain.
