Crystal Mountain Spring

17 Apr, 2006
Posted at 23.34 PDT

Adapted from a recent email to family and friends:

As mentioned in the previous post, I was most fortunate on Easter Sunday to visit Crystal Mountain ski resort in the Cascades here in Washington state. It’s where I first tried out snowboarding, with initially mixed results, but also where I really began falling in love with it. As with most mad endeavors, it was close friends that conned me into it. And thank goodness for close friends. Thanks, guys!

Sunday marked Crystal Mountain’s last regular day of the season, and it turned out to be nearly perfect for it. It felt a little strange—leaving and returning with the sun still in the sky was decidedly novel for something that I’ve been associating with Winter—but despite the relative warmth of the morning in Seattle, up in the mountains it was quite chilly. Better yet, a late season storm had dumped 15 inches of fresh powder on the slopes over the previous two days, setting the stage for a fantastically beautiful day when Sunday turned out bright and sunny.

A few months ago I picked up a snowboard, an Arbor A-Frame 162, and have been thrilled with it to no end. Snowboards tend to be garishly designed, and this one, with its strong echoes of mid-century design, immediately appealed to my sense of aesthetics. Without fail, it draws comments every time I take it out.

The amount of gear needed for this sport is astounding to a Southerner.

• Snowboard Boots
• Thermal socks
• Thermal underwear, tops and bottoms
• Snow pants
• Layers of shirts
• Snow jacket
• Goggles
• Helmet
• Gloves
• Snowboard (!)
• Bindings

A shot taken from the lifts on the way up.

This is where I’m heading on that chairlift; down into the valley is where I’ll be going. The snowpack is more or less the city’s water supply, and this year has been a very good season for snow. There’s nine FEET of snow. The day was gloriously beautiful.

A shot against the back-country on a later run. That’s Mt. Rainier over my shoulder, almost entirely hidden by clouds — it’s so tall it generates its own local weather patterns. In this shot I’m currently at just under 6,900 feet. Rainier is more than twice that high at 14,400 feet. After this photo I end up descending about half a mile before catching the chairlifts back up.

Crystal Mountain, with those 15 inches of fresh powder, was sheer heaven for snowboarding, even for people like me who haven’t quite got the hang of the nuances of boarding in it. Even if you take a tumble — and I’m still taking several (note the helmet) — powder’s so soft you come up laughing. It’s like being eight years old again. And it’s much better than going superman onto hard snow when you catch the front edge of the board and are sent flinging forward. Last time I went I hit so hard I knocked the morning clear out of me. I was disoriented for half an hour, and boy did THAT one hurt. This is certainly NOT a sport for the faint of heart. I think it took me two weeks or more to recover from that incident, and my knee is still giving twinges.

Still, it had one good effect: I spent Sunday on the slopes taking much more care with my boarding. What got me in trouble last time was having a new insanely fast board with a fresh coat of wax. The tempation to point it downhill and let ‘er rip was too much for me, and I ended up finding myself at speeds beyond my skill level. Ouch. Sunday’s trip by contrast was full of pleasant surprises. It was the first time I noticed myself not getting particularly tensed up over the lifts, which are a bane to noobs on boards. I was pleased that my last trip of the season marked the first time I took no tumbles getting off the lifts. It was that, weirdly enough, which finally made me feel like I was really getting comfortable on the board. Sunday was also my first trip out to the mountains which didn’t result in any new and unsual pains from various strained bits and pieces, just pleasantly sore muscles.

No new injuries on the season’s last outing means I’ll just look forward that much more eagerly to the next one this coming winter. In the meantime, boy do I wish Summer would hurry up and get here.

 

 

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