Sunday, December 17, 2006

Crystal post-storm


Hmmmm, I love a good storm. And the PNW was hit with another monster this week, brining in rain, wind, and snow; lots of snow. Crystal was hit with almost 3 feet in three days. The top of the mountain was on a wind hold for the second half of the week (they had winds of 100+ mph) so on Saturday, Andrea, my dad, and I headed up hoping for some super deep fluff. Did we get what we were looking for? Not so much. Before the final six inches fell, the wind had beaten the snow on most of the exposed slopes into an rock hard boiler plate. But the top 6-9 inches were great skiing and the boiler crust gave you something to edge into as you carved.

Ok, so we had gotten our hopes up for 2 to 3 feet of the kind of uber-deep madness that makes jumping off the chairlift seem like a reasonable suggestion. It was not to be (is it ever in the PNW?). But the area got a dumping, Seattle and the surrounding area was owned by mother nature for the second time in two months, and Baker's base just got that much deeper. Which means that Baker, where we will be skiing with Chester and his brother Will, over New Years, is going to be nuclear. (Well, if the crust gets soft.) And we are all better skiers for it.



On the way up, we were treated to a wonderful sunrise over Rainier. The storm knocked out power for over 1 million people in Oregon and Washington, many were happy to see the sun.

Here's a little experiment, a video of Andrea making some turns at the end of the day.

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