November 29, 2003, Southback Crystal Mt

Well I arrived at Crystal around 7am and not too long after I pulled in the cars started piling up.  That made my stomach sick so I packed my snowshoes and waited for the lifts to open.  I wanted to check out what mother nature has blown a day after the storm.  This time there was no cat track.  Just few inches crusty snow so I was skeptical about conditions up there.  Anyways as I made my way past the flats and knolls the sun came out then it went away and came out...on and off.  All tracks were pretty much covered except a faint trace of ours.  I encountered another party of 2 (skier and split boarder) and their dog.  Their 1st run looked awesome and everything held.  At sometimes the dog was passing the skier.  It made for some good laughs as I headed up for my 1st.

Snow conditions varied in the bowls in amounts of blown snow.  Some had a few inches to a foot in some spots. All on top of breakable crust with the consolidated dryer snow from previous below.

Anyway 1st run was quite a treat so for the next run I went the summit which added around 400ft.  It was really blowing at the summit and as I looked at the resort it appeared to be socked in.  Crazy weather.  Back here there were 3 of us, a dog, sun here and there, and a big area to track out if we could.   I dropped in from the northeast side of the summit below lizards back.  The top 50ft. or so was anywhere from few to 6 inches of wind blown pow on very hard ice crust.  After that I headed more easterly into the glades and trees where conditions were alot better.  about 300ft. of turns in a foot of untracked windblown.  Once out of the trees I entered a chute about 20 to 30 feet wide and about 100ft. down.  I only released the first few inches so pretty stable considering the avi danger.  The snow really changed as I exited the chute and just got thicker below the bowl.  I got 2 awesome runs in and as I was leaving my 2 ski buds from previous trip decided to show.  So all there were only 5 of us and a dog back there.  Hey you know what's funny is that the dog had more lines then me.  I mean straight shots from top to bottom without a turn.  I have never seen a dog beat a skier down a hill until this day.  Since the dog was smaller it almost looked like it was riding on his belly at times with all paws moving at once.  I took some pics so well see how they turn out.