Crystal 2/20/05: Death of a Season?
The season may be giving up. Did Arthur Miller write this? Burning the briefcase, spray painting the wingtips red and smoking all those Brookes Brothers linen shirts.
Rallied early with bro-in-law Bert and pulled into the lot @ 8:00. We made it about halfway up the upper lot, indicating that even though the old gal was running, the masses preferred their demolition gardening or poodle molestations.
The lifts started late, turning the public up the scarred slopes at 8:45. Brush poked up everywhere. Feeble patches of snow attempted to cover the thighs of Bull Run, Lower E and Deer Fly.
Met up with Rehabit and spun some laps with him. Rumors of Rusty et al were floated, but those blossoms never fruited.
In area, it was tough. Where the grooming had been successful, I could dream of being in Sun Valley: single digit temps on carefully crafted corduroy. But what the groomers had omitted was wretched nastiness, from previous days frozen slush tracks to iced marbles to danger chicken heads. From real danger chickens. Groin Valley was cruised from a number of angles. We took laps on Lucky Shlot whose second middle roller was not skiable and they were diverting people onto the catwalk of frozen chunkular death cookies, rocks and rigid cattrack attack ridges. Upper Lucky Shlot was OK, you could rip around with decent coverage and no gomers, but the lower section was dirty, like wash your mouth out dirty.
So we headed over to the Molest Queen and herfed it up a well defined boot pack along the shoulder of the Throne and skied some surprisingly good snow on the skiers right of Hamburger Hill, in the shade. Shin deep crystalline goodness. So we headed back to the cars for the touring gear.
Rehabit got a call for a ralfingly sick pooch, so he sadly split. I hope all's well with the doggy.
We headed back up the Molest Queen and hit up the bootpack at noon. Gaining the top of the pack, the snow was too thin to follow the ridge up to the top of the Throne, so we traversed out into Avalanche Basin, crossing rotted snow over scree until we got underneath Sasquatch Chute. Donning skins, we angled up for a few hundred vertical before strapping the boards to da back for the frozen ladder of death up Sasquatch Chute. Topping that, we knew what we had to do. Looking out over the backside of the Queen and the frontside runs, it was all brown. Now she really did look like a burnt out hooker, scaly and gasping for life. Never in my whole life could I have imagined it to look like this in February. So we headed for the top of the King, gaining the summit at 1:20. Not bad for a bunch of old farts.
Some kook had tried to boot it up the Hourglass and from the evidence, had given up: the top was all rotten snow on cliffs. Pinball was equally hairy, not much hope of surviving the entry slot and the bumpers were swathed in rotted sugar. Brain Damage wasn't doable since the cliff in the middle wasn't filled in an there's wasn't enough snow to clear the rib into Left Damage. Sad sad, sad.
Bells rung, homage paid, ashes scattered, howls of anguish, joy, confusion and rage were emitted before we donned the planks and skittered down the S. side of Silver King. Ice, rattly rotten ice. So, keying off info from Hamburger Hill, we traversed over into Silver Basin, past the boxcar into the shade and found some decent snow with patches of tricky windcrust. Face shots were had down to the knoll to the applause of some other skinners to which I responded with a florid bow.
Knowing where the sweet snow lay, we headed over to hidden valley and scored more shin deep lightness in the angled light of late afternoon. ONe more skin back up to the Three Way cliffs and back down for the last run of the day.
Ales and comraderie we passed in the Elk among the old guard, faces not seen all year, every one wondering if this was the last lift served.
In desperation, we've all agreed to wash our cars and poke any proffered poodles.
I am a bachelor this weekend... we'll see indeed
As I skated right on to the 6Pack at 10 til 9:00, with no wait, the lifty says to me...
"be nice to the rocks, heh heh heh" :the_finge
Needless to say, that's needless to say.
I actually couldn't believe what I was seeing as it was my first trip to x-tal this year. Like Buster said, runs on the front side that are usually at least 4 feet under base by now didn't even have a skiable line down them. The doors don't even open :(
so West Face was the first order of the day for me... Semi soft carvable refrozen granular was actually some of the best snow I had all (1/2) day. After a few more groomer laps, I Tried some of the uncut in upper Green Valley and it hadn't softened up at all yet, except for this one turn I had in a big shadow... yeah that turn was cool! ;) yeah!
I almost forgot how to ski the pow and barely linked 4 or 5 turns through the goodness we did find before having to boogie. Anyhow at least now I can say I came, I saw, I weeped...
Here's to a killer March!
