Crystal Mountain has been getting a little of everything this week from sunny days to rain to stormy powder days. After some crazy high winds and big crowds, mid week brought the cold precip finally!  Some fun chalky conditions with decent powder if you could find it but still far below whats considered “normal”. So all fingers were crossed for the storm days to deliver the goods! I actually got nervous riding chair 6 Tuesday when the winds kicked up, some precarious places to be swinging around.  After upper mountain closed rightfully due to high wind along the ridge.  It ended up being a killer day after running into some friends that came up to visit. Yay for friends on a powder day!

The four of us swapped picking runs for a while, great to see what other folks favorite runs are. I could tell Mount Baker was treating Liam alright, no longer a stranger to our heavy snowpack.  Still fresh in big swaths of Downhill but the protected stuff in the trees was the jam! Dom kept us all entertained with spinning off over everything! There are a few creeks that need to disappear but they should be buried by the end of the week. Hannah and I both did lawn dart impersonations after some creeks took us by surprise. There is still so many hidden gems out there I forget about off Forest Queens.  Temps spiked later in the day and I swear my lil heart nearly broke when I saw it doing that PNW Hot Pow (Rain) at the base area around 11pm, all as forecasted but still enough to spark nearly a physical reaction to this seasons wonky weather patterns.

With winds dying down and Christy having only one day to ski before OR, we made sure to be out early (too early for a guy that works nights). In my 9 years at Crystal I’d never actually had a 1st Chair, til today. Pockets of weird wind blown humps across Ferks and Powder pass caught us off guard and surprisingly wind scoured slopes right next to blown in deep runs.
Green Valley laps were so good! So many big smiles and high fives coming back into the lift gates.

Once Chair 6 opened up and knowing it hadn’t been skied much at all the day before we knew it was going to be worth the 5 minute line. Pulling into line its just great seeing all stoked friends heckling one another.  We crossed paths with legendary boot fitter Joe and the unofficially “raddest dude in skiing” Scott while lapping Campbell basin. Damn those guys can ski! After heading back over to REX through some down right scraped off Bear Pits, we did some more laps around Green Valley waiting for Northway. Than the unthinkable, I got tired and had to head to work. Better to ski another day than over do it cause tomorrow will be just as good. I left plenty of snow out there to share with everybody. So stoked for deep days with rad people!

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