Season Wrap Up

After a strong showing of excellent winter powder early in the week, the last day's of Crystal's "regular" season whimpered out after a run of foggy wet weather and sloppy snow. Disappointed, I watched from home as the cameras showed thick fog and 38 degree "snow". A quick dash to the mountain bike trails between lowland showers found the dirt perfect and the temperatures short-sleeve warm – more fun than the reports from the mountain of glove-soaking wetness and sloppy, new snow. With Crystal open just 2 days a week for the extended spring/summer season, it will continue to be hard getting good weather to coincide with the weekend-only opening. Like this week. Sunny and warm during the week, then showers coming next weekend. With operations limited to 2 lifts, then one, the draw diminishes.

Looking back, it was a good winter. Bucking the norms, conditions were backwards by memorical standards (Memorical: Adj - History as memory recalls it, not always accurate, but sworn to be true). The season started strong as it often does and continued deep and cold through december as it often doesn't. January brought in the crowds, as usual, and the dry, lack-of-snow icy groomer days, as usual. When the ski school mobs subsided in late february, we expected the march dumps to quickly fluff up the hill. MIA they were. A taste here, some sun there, a powder quickie out north or south. We waited. And waited. A dump of pow and it was Game On. Then, game off. Then…  The last 2 years made us think that late february through the end would be full of new snow. The Law of Averages made us pay for the awesome december with a more mediocre spring. More Hawaii shirt days in january and february than march. Best spring pow last sunday and tuesday. A good year, a great year. Just in a different order, at different times.

A quick compilation of the season. My season, my winter, good times.

Kkz

Forecast

Some good mountain biking this week, as the trails will be dried after a slight dampening, providing excellent traction, no mud, and dry wood. Long term says showers moving in friday through the weekend. If the weekend looks like a bust, drop off your skis at Sturtevant's for a ½ price tune and wax on friday the 26th (one day only).

April Powder Cont.

Like rewinding the tape to sunday morning, today was another mid-winter powder day. The only Aprilness was an extreme lack of participation. Since ski season is "over" in most people's minds (is there still snow up there?), even a causally late start allowed for an easy traffic-free drive, letting the new, improved Turboru stretch its legs.

We relaxed inside till the Gondy started loading. Two minutes later, line gone, we boarded without a hitch. We expected hitches, as yesterday, all Crystal season passes expired and hassles ensued trying to get the gates to open. Seems someone forgot to change the closing date "in the system" and all passes show up as expired. Even if you anted up the 816$ last week to renew your pass. Hopefully, someone will throw some Cheetos to the kid Crystal has locked up in the basement as their IT Department, and he'll get things fixed by spring season so our passes don't have to be confiscated and redone (aka last year).

The boot-top refresh of new snow over the previous days' cut powder was awesome, go-fast, ego snow. There was a steady stream of Wow!, Woohoo, and general whooping as people filed into the empty Rex "line" after their first runs. I've never heard the word 'weird' used to describe the weather so many times as today. 50% of the mountain was clear with high clouds, 50% in thick fog, and the two conditions were constantly moving around. We followed the non-fog portion, and it led us to some great runs. Employee Housing to Campbell Basin and everything in-between, all offered up the goods at some point. A rope in my line – Go Fast, Go TightRun-of-the-day was Upper K2 to …. an old school area I haven't skied in years we just called Secret Spot today. SS is tight, tight trees that open up into steep powder stashes. Trees so tight you can't see the line till you are at just the right angle. Then suddenly you see it. Crank a turn, before you hit the tree, and take the next pitch. It was intense with the K2s cranked to 11, but we never hit wood or ate bark. We did laugh the whole way down – four times.

And nobody thought our laughter odd. Everyone seemed to be full of the moment, having a gas, and pushing the limits today. I'm looking at tulips blooming in the backyard as I write. Screw 'em, it was a powder day. Until 1:15. Suddenly, the sun came out, and within 15 minutes the off-piste heavied up. Speed, aggression, and momentum earned us a couple more runs and then a T2B Gondy Line to end the day. 

Kkz

Rant:

Crystal musta dumped tanker loads of de-icer on the boulevard this morning. I was actually hoping for some snow driving (kudos to the WRX, sideways with 4-tire rooster tails, pulling into A-Lot behind me). At the end of the day, every car in the lot had a thick coating of dried, white, paint and wheel corroding, de-icer residue. My Turboru was covered in thick crystals of gritty salt. After ruining a couple set of wheels to corrosion, I've taken to rinsing my car after a de-icer Crystal Boulevard climb. What happened to the days where people learned how to drive in snow? The ditches on the side of the road are there to collect the weak and allow the learned a front row parking spot.

Forecast

Sunnier skies and warming temps may turn tomorrow into a slopfest, so face northward in your pursuits. Precip and even warmer on thursday and into friday sound like rain at the base. A cold front with precipitation could go either way, goodness or terribleness, for the weekend, and "the models disagree". Pay your money and take your chances.

April Pow

The season's waning. The weather is funkily between warm and cold, clear and rainy, snowy and sloppy. Crystal's closing chairs and runs for the season. My brain flip flops between yearning for steep and deep, tight dirt trails, turbochargers, or strong west winds. It's logistics that wear me down. The constant "wax and pack" on my do list. The 5:15 alarm clock. The 3 ½ hours of driving and gas. So, for some reason my brain, rolling all things around at all times, decides to wake up this morning at 1:30 for a 2 hour thinking session. At 5:15, the last thing I wanted to do was get up and get in the car. Mind over body, kinda like making that steep turn between the trees down the fall line that your body says is a bad idea. I sleepily got on the road. Telemetry is a great thing, though. Seeing the overnight accumulations of new snow punched me through my brain haze. Two hours later, change, sit, wait for lifts… Ah, mountain air and thick fog.

MemorialApril dumps are not unusual, but last night's was one of the best. Shin-deep snow covered the mountain with knee-deep pockets, rewarding the ambitious. The cold, blind traverse to Memorial ended at the top of acres of deep untracked. Floating effortlessly down, all thoughts other than "get the powder" fled the mind. And with a lift line unable to even fill all the chairs, it was right back up for more.

Employee Housing put the Wow in Powder (spelled Pwowder). Amigoette and I took our now standard (I wanted to say famous, as in world famous burgers) lines Employee Housiingand had to stop occasionally just to soak in the Wowness. I-5 was smooth and fast. The weather continued as weird as spring weather does. A half hour of thick fog, a half hour of dumping snow, then a half hour of broken cloud sun. Repeat cycle. We dashed through run after run of pow. In the open when clear, in the trees when foggy. Working south during a fog out period found Campbell Basin with bad vis, but Upper K2's trees held the goods, and K2 Face pumped up 20 foot launches into fluffy fast landings.

Soon to be Head ImpactFrontside north, to Bear Pits south, and back for another E-Housing. The sun was out now, and the snow was heating up. We dumped a layer of clothes, sweating in the sun. Five minutes later, halfway up Rex, it was dumping snow again. Shortly, an inch of new covered the cut pow and, dang, we had to repeat the cycle in the now foggy trees. The short sun breaks had done some damage, and the snow halfway down Rex was getting heavy and thick. Compensating with steepness and on north facers worked for a while, but the powfest was over. A big Top-2-Bottom convinced our legs we should head for home.

The buzz continues, chasing this morning's I-hate-to-get-up thoughts away.

Kkz

Forecast

A little new snow tonight will freshen up the hill. Monday will be cut leftovers, especially tasty on the norther facing aspects. Reheating the leftovers on wednesday may make things heavy and sloppy. This new snow has ruined prospects of corn, but continued freeze thaw cycles will improve the consolidation towards the end of the week.

Amigoette on Employee Housing

Light to Heavy

Chased, chaser, middle man – all fun positions to be in today. Picking up a stray Amigo as the lifts opened, CD and I had an extra brain to select runs and another coat to chase. It worked well. Especially with the 7-8" of light new snow that fell last evening, nicely filling in and refreshing the snow. My only worry was that the cooling temps had hardened the rain layer into ice. It didn't. I was able to use yesterday's knowledge of what line to take, what bumps to bank off of, and turned the skis up to 11 and let them ride. The perfect zone for my now not-quite-so-new K2s, focused eyes, and spring-strong ski legs. 

The cloud level was about 5,500 to 8,000 feet, putting the upper mountain in a thick fog. Not to worry as the the great snow let us take advantage of good visibility in the trees. Getting to the runs was another story with blind traverses and cat tracks the norm. Tracking the coat of the lead Amigo helped, although when I was in front, it was a jouncing, arm-waving trip. But I never led the followers into any ditches – that I know of. Amazing that with similar conditions to Sunday, there was nearly no one on the mountain today. This morning's opening line was only a dozen chair loads compared to yesterday's lodge-circling mob. I'm sorry for all the weekend warriors that had to work today…. *jaw tightened poker face changes to shit-eating grin* … no, not really – retirement has its privileges.

The normal Rex-side suspects ruled the morning with go-anywhere snow that just invited big dropping turns through the tightest, steepest lines. Once up to 11, it was easy to reel the show back in if needed. Until I hit the one ice ball of the day in Door 4. I heard my tails clank (clank is not a good sound for skis) on an unseen chunk. A high speed, point-em-down banked must-make turn. Body continuing down the fall line, skis not so much. Over on my back, tuck, roll, blinded by the head-in-the-snow maneuver, skis underneath, shake the snow off my goggles, and ski on as the snowboarder standing in the trees calmly says "nice recovery". I think it was a faster line than my normal turns but it won't be repeated. On purpose anyway.

As sunny as it gotShort brightnesses gave us hope that Powder Bowl might have visibility. Nope, it closed down as we got there. Ferd went Braille skiing, I hit Upper K2, one of my favorite lines in the right conditions. And right conditions they were. Brain a buzzin', I followed CD onto K2 Face. 25/30 years ago we cut our steep and deep teeth on K2. Under Chair 5, it was the place to be seen as your head was just 2 feet below the skis of people on the chair. Its nasty off-camber slope dropped so many wanna-bees into the trees that it's now closed off by a rope, hard to get into, but still a rush of nostalgic steepness. 

Around noon it all went south. Weird expression, is south bad? Worse than going north? Start over. Around noon, it got heavy. And proceeded to really heavy. We added aggression, momentum, steepness, and speed to compensate. Amigo #3, Ferd, had to bail – to go to work. Hard core, he skied hard all morning, drives to Everett from Crystal, and goes to work swing shift. Kudos. CD and I finished off our legs in thickening mashed potatoes and called it a day.

Kkz

Forecast

I can't see anything in the forecast that looks good for the conditions we left today. Overnight freezing will turn the mashed potatoes even nastier. Warming tomorrow, with minimal precip, will just push the off-piste to slop. Rain and really warm wednesday and then cooling to freeze it all later in the week. I'm not impressed and will take the next couple days off. Some new snow may change it up for friday and on, but I'm off to Portland for the final Turboru horsepower infusion.

She's Back

Winter made a cameo appearance last night and dropped boot-top to shin-deep powder over the mountain. She left in a slight hurry, however, and let spring raise the temperature a bit too high. There were good and bad points to the warmish temps. Our opening Memorial run was untracked but slightly heavy. My first-run legs compensated for the heaviness, but not for the hidden bumps my first-run brain couldn't see under the smooth new snow. Hitting the rain crust was jarring, but at the same time it wasn't really ice, but kinda like a carvable snow cone (just missing the cherry syrup). 

The masses weren't paying attention last weekend to the sunny, warm, weather in town and didn't understand ski season is over. So… they all piled onto 410 and up to Crystal for the biggest morning lines in 3 months. Chinook absorbed the horde quickly while the Gondola plugged along at 8 people/minute for who knows how long. Rex struggled to keep up, and in a crowded-morning Rexish attitude, threw in frequent sequencer crashes just to keep things not humming along. Luckily, C-6 opening was looming, and people started "sneaking" away. When the light went green, Rex's line was 3 chairs long. Knowing the Six line would be huge (it was), we stayed on Frontside Tree runs, eyeing the Northway opening, skiing in the trees because of fog. Nothing wrong here, we cycled run after run of steep fun.

By we, I mean Amigoette and I. Amigoette came down with this year's mutation of the flu 3 weeks ago, losing this year's 60% effective flu-vaccine lottery. And by winning I mean getting to sit fever bound in the room during our Whistler trip. Bummer. But she was back in powerful form today, slicin' and dicin' through the trees and snaking between the bumps. Awesome to have her back in the groove.

What wasn't awesome was our only trip down Green Valley during a one minute visibility clearing. Oh, the Valley snow was great but the line on GV was huge. We'd also heard from our favorite patroller that the lines at the Northback gates, an hour before expected opening, were already huge. And that the lower Northway snow was (a term I'm not familiar with and don't know how to spell) "glouchie". It didn't sound good. The C-3 line was full of Ottobanners waiting for Northway to open and to go swell the lift line. Cross Northway of today's do-list. We bailed from the line to Kelly's-Gap-it to the base, but it was closed for Rock Face blasting. Skating back to the end of the line, we took our lumps and waited, and waited…..

The AftermathBack to the Frontside Trees for the rest of the day – steep, good snow, good vis, and no lift line. We can hang out here. Bear Pits, Doors, LS Trees, Memorial, all great. It had been snowing most of the day, and post-noon there was 2" of a wet velvet coating providing even more fun. An odd snowfall, white and crystalline in the air, bouncing off your goggles, but sticking and melting to your coat, gloves, and pants. It was warm enough that when my gloves soaked through I kept skiing. Gore-Tex kept me dry inside as we lapped the Doors and Bear Pits. But, I'd gained a couple pounds of water weight on the outside. When we called it a day – a great day – and headed down, it was white rain at the base.

Kkz 

Forecast

A difficult spring forecast. Light snow will continue through the night, but will dropping temps freeze today's wet snow into nasty ice? Will tuesday's rising snow levels bring rain? Or just thick glop? For sure it looks wet and warm from wednesday on. Or, will the "models disagree" and it all changes tomorrow? Stay tuned. (I'm betting on tomorrow.)