Crystal Mountain Tours, Dec. 23 & 24, 2009

On Dec. 23, Eric and I decided to tour around the Crystal Mountain, WA backcountry.  The runs trend toward the wide-open bowl variety, which is a nice change of pace from the chutes that I prefer.  Crystal's terrain, for the most part, is short and sweet, and on this day I think we did 5 runs total.  That's a lot of transitioning between skinning and riding...

Our first run down the south-facing backside of the King was surprisingly good.  A little sun affected, but creamy.

We headed through a notch on the other side of the little valley where the wind was absolutely ripping, making transitioning a pain.  Another group with ideas similar to our own arrived a couple of minutes after us, but there was plenty of room for everyone.  The top of the slope was a little slabby from all the wind, but it rode really nicely.

Tracked

We toured up the broad, shady bowl to the southwest, where we found cold snow but lots of wind-affect, and then re-traced our route back out to the parking lot.

Heading back up into the wind and out of the sun before strapping in.

 

A lonely place, the way I like it.

Rainer with a crazy cloud hat

Getting motivated for the last climb of the day.

Given the lack of recent significant snow and a rain crust, I'd say we found the goods.

The next day, we headed up from Lot C and had a discouraging skin up East Peak.  The steep trees required ski-cramponing, which sapped a lot of our motivation for getting a lot of riding in.  We spent a little while kicking cornices, and as we got bolder, managed to knock some refrigerator-sized ones down towards Cement Creek.  This was probably the funnest part of the day.

We did a quick lap down the backside, and then took the "adventurous" route back to the parking lot, which required an epic bushwack at the bottom.  Mostly dust on crust this day, but as usual, good times...

Here's a short video of some of the riding we did over the two days:

Dec. 23 & 24, 2009 sourdough, etc from Preston Few on Vimeo.