The snow began to fall in the Cascades, big and flaky and deep, right around the time our plane touched down… on the other side of the country.
Skiing tends to go this way sometimes. Winter in Seattle can be fickle. Hell, summers here are fickle too. If you blink or go away for a long weekend, you might miss it. But lucky for me snow fell again at the end of the month after a long dry spell, and I was able to get two whole days on planks in December 2018 for Turns All Year month 86!
Sunday, December 23, 2019 | Crystal Mountain
At the crack of 5:30am, I met the Sipple Sisters (not yet a band name, but I’m working on it) and Chris to head to Crystal, where we met Cori and Reid and ran into Kjersti and Jessi, and the group of Mitch/Bryan/Taylor/Amy, then later Yulia & Louie and Nikki & Cory! You, dear reader, do not likely know or care about this little party ski, but I was so excited to have a “small-town” experience at our local mountain that I needed to share.
They spun the Gondi early, and we were skiing by 8:45am and enjoyed fresh tracks. In fact, we chased fresh tracks all day around the mountain, meaning we got face shows but paid for them in traverses. Tis the currency of the resort skier.
We also hiked The King, a 45-minute traverse+hike wherein I was solidly in the pain cave due to new boots and the aforementioned traversing, but we made it to the top and had insanely good skiing down and no one took a picture I don’t think because we are the worst but a month later I can still remember how much my face hurt from smiling.
Theresa getting in deep on our first run of the day. The best photo I captured all day.
Monday, December 24, 2019 | Crystal Mountain
For a little back-to-back action, Jordan and I headed to Crystal straight from his work for an entirely different day of skiing from the day before. The sun was out. The Mountain was shining in all of her glory. And with Mitch as our guide (and photographer!) we found untracked pow even at the end of the day. I’ll let the photos speak for themselves:
Thanks for joining in on December turns fun! Read all of my stories about the endless quest to ski every month of the year for Turns All Year.
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