Monkey

I went to Crystal today with Bill, Simon, and Peter. This was my first day snowboarding this season (I’ve been slacking) and it turned out to be a fine day. There was, well, a blizzard at Crystal. NWAC says it snowed 11” while we were there, and I believe it. It also shows that the winds gusted to 31mph mid-morning, and I think that’s conservative. Up on the ridges it oscillated between low visibility and pure white out depending on the wind. But down off the ridge on the slopes back towards the Rainier Express it was glorious. Nice, deep, fluffy powder, perhaps 18”+ deep, and reasonable enough visibility to fly down the mountain. I choked a bit on powder more than once. Coverage is excellent for this time of season, and good for anytime of the year. We spent most of the time lapping the Rainier Express, and then took a run down Exterminator then stopped for lunch. Exterminator was good, but much more tracked out than I expected… lots of people had the same idea we did. I didn’t go back out after lunch… my legs were just too tired, as I’ve done nothing to prepare for the season. Peter went back out for a half hour or so, and Simon and Bill stayed out for another hour before we packed it in and headed home.

I was pretty pleased with how my left knee feels after today. I damaged it last spring, it turns out pretty badly. It needs surgery that will keep me off the leg for 6 weeks, and then take 6 months to rehabilitate to the point where I can ride again. I’m putting that off, though, on the theory that some boarding is better than no boarding. I’ll have it done in the spring. It felt fine in the powder, but in firm bumps it was extremely painful. I’m gonna have to pick and choose my days carefully this season, but now I know that I have some fine days ahead of me this season.

A few pics from today. I didn’t take many since, well, it was friggin freezing, windy, and hard to see.

I went to Crystal today with Bill. NWAC telemetry said they had 14″ in the last 24 hours, and I’d say it was fairly accurate. Better yet, it accumulated well below freezing… below 10F or so. The high temp up top while we were there was 18F. It was super light and fluffy all day, and fairly fantastic. We had an excellent day. Many fresh tracks were had, even late into the day. We lapped Sunnyside for a bit under Rex, then headed over to Northway and proceeded to find joy on every run. We finished up with a run down Exterminator where I found a few untracked turns in the trees. The place was pretty crowded, but we still found lots of solitude on Northway except for a brief period when the lift line got stunningly huge (see the last picture). Where the hell did all of those people come from? I’ve never seen it anywhere near that big. Luckily they didn’t come back, and the line disappeared again like usual. The second pic shows the late morning goods still waiting for us. The little bit of yellow blur in the cloud of pow is Bill.

Crystal was, once again, the shiznizzle today. Clear and cold, it alternated between sunny and cloudy, but no fog or wind. I met up with Bill and Peter. The quality of what we found up there was excellent: light and fluffy, with no crust. Even stuff that had been tracked up days ago was still lovely. We spent much of the day out on the Northway chair again exploring, and we found many, many untracked turns in deep pow, often thigh-deep. No lines at Northway, except when the lift broke down for 10 min or so. Riding out there is very different from the rest of the area… when we were done we took a lap down Exterminator back to the base, where we found out that Crystal had indeed been really crowded today. We had no idea.

Pictures courtesy of Bill.

Holy crap! Crystal was amazing today… if you weren’t there, you were in the wrong place. Tons of light fluffy pow, a little wind off and on (sometimes strong), it puked snow the entire time, and no lines. Bombs going off when we reached the parking lot, and bombs going off all morning. Visibility was poor when we first got there, but ended up just fine as the day went on. We ended up lapping Brand X in the Northway area over and over again and it was well worth the short hike to get over there. Our first run out there was essentially untracked over a fantastic pitch with anywhere from knee to waist deep powder throughout. It was honestly too deep in places. Subsequent runs were pretty much just as good, as we found that the dumping snow and wind essentially erased our earlier tracks as the day progressed. Those were some of the best runs since Island Lake Lodge last January

I left my camera in my pack, which I left at the bottom of Rex for most of the day, so I only have one picture: the car at the end of the day. You can see the wind effect on the car: a smidge of snow on the roof, but at least 8″ on the hood.

Went to Crystal today since, once again, the world was covered with White Armageddon and it was likely that few people would be at work. I was lazy about it… I left around 8:30 in the morning, and I only rode until 2pm or so. I’m sure my out-of-shape legs were tired after the first run. It was a good day, though. Nice snow, and pretty good coverage in most places. The temps were in the mid 20’s. Where there was low coverage was generally the stepper faces that too many people had gone through. It snowed a bit of the past few days, but the place is pretty much tracked out. I did managed to find many untracked bits here and there were I could make a few nice high-speed pow turns. All-in-all, a nice first day of the season.