I sent a vacation email to the team at work, dug the gear out of storage, packed the rock skis in the car, and headed down to Crystal Mountain this morning for Opening Day 2009. Never having been to an opening day, I didn’t know what to expect.
On the drive down, I realized that a lot of schools had the day off. Sure enough, the hill was packed with a decidedly non-standard Crystal crowd. In fact, by the time I left, the lots showed evidence of being extremely full, all the way down through D lot.
With a crowd that big, the Chinook Express and Forrest Queen were very crowded. But hey, those were the only lifts that were open (aside from the bunny hill) and who am I to complain about skiing in early November for half price?
By noon, there were tracks starting to appear in Campbell Basin. The people putting in the effort for fresh tracks were being rewarded with two to three feet of good quality snow. That being said, anything off the groomed runs usually resulted in scraping a rock or three. If you have rock skis, use them.
While taking a break at the upper lodge around 12:50, I heard a rumor that REX was going to open at 1 despite the “we’re not opening this today” sign. I skied down and joined the small group that had gathered in front of the lift. We waited for about 50 minutes before finally getting on the lift. Towards the end, I admit thinking it wasn’t worth the wait, but boy was I wrong! I was probably about the 10th chair up and I didn’t waste any time bombing down into Green Valley.
Incredible.
That one run alone was worth the $30 lift ticket. Top to bottom untracked powder. I jumped onto a chair and watched it get tracked out as I rode up. On the second run, I did a little bit of hiking and got another huge run of fresh snow. By that point, the football field sized plots of untouched snow had pretty much disappeared, but I was in awe of the fantastic November skiing.
But yes, it is early season. You WILL hit rocks. Don’t take those brand new $700 skis with you, but do find a way to get out there! Ski season in Washington has arrived!
You can find photos in the photo gallery. They all have the title “Opening Day.” Also note that the text up to this point is a duplicate off a post I made for the SeattlePI website. I’ll keep a lot of the skiing stuff there, but I’ll still continue to cross post a few of my favorites.
One of my favorite parts of skiing is the people you meet on the lifts. For example, my first ride up was with a guy who said he hadn’t skied in 10 years. Another guy said, “Have you been locked in a closet?” “Close. A cell.” Turns out he got out of jail about a month ago. By the end of the lift ride, the ex-con had a potential job offer from another person on the lift. The second ride up was with two wives who had ditched their husbands to come skiing and were making fun of their guys for going to work instead of skiing.
There was a lot of discussion among the skiers at work about whether or not Crystal would be worth it since they only had 2-3 feet of snow which is barely enough to cover the rocks. I laughed all day as I thought of them sitting at work, especially as snow was blowing up into my chest on those runs down Green Valley. Seriously, when have you ever been skiing and though, “Ehh I should have been working today”? And as for the chest high snow (and I already twittered this): When you’re a 6’4" skier, it’s hard to get face shots, but the more accurate "nipple shots" doesn’t sound right.
One other thing I left out of the Seattle PI is that I saw my first real fight on the mountain. As we were hanging out around the bottom of REX hoping that they would open it, there was a lot of shuffling and jockying for positions in the line/blob. One guy was definitely mad (and I think he was drunk) but he was running through a wide assortment of foul language directed at the four teenage girls who had somehow camped in the front of the line. Eventually his berating moved onto someone else and he ended up throwing a punch. The crowd quickly subdued him and ski patrol jumped into action and escorted him away. I know we joke about “no friends on a powder day” but come on, it’s not like one spot in line is going to spoil your 100s of options from the top of that lift.
All in all, this was an interesting day. It started off as a groomer-cruiser which helped me get back into gear and also because the off-piste snow was sketchy. It ended with three runs that I will remember for a very long time. It’s probably the second or third best runs I’ve ever had. (Other’s in that category are the day at Crystal with Jay and Andy when we had the ski photographer and also the runs that Mike and I made off the top of Lone Peak.)