Serious SNOW!

Josh and I spent another weekend up at Crystal.  We drove up Saturday afternoon and got a spot in F lot.  We really prefer to park up in B lot, it's a lot closer and we can walk to the chair rather than wait for the shuttle to give us a ride.  Its a small issue though, and we were happy to be nestled in between two giant RVs/wind and noise blockers.

Sunday was excellent.  Lots of powder, and we found some runs that were pretty much untracked.  The real story is that there was so much snow we ended up staying on Sunday night.  We went up to the Snorting Elk to meet up with some friends and while we were there the power flickered a few times.  Beyond the fact that it meant the snow was dumping outside, we didn't think much of it.

We expected some awesome snow in the morning, but we didn't expect to wake up to this:

That is just about 2.5 feet of fresh powder.

Being in F lot meant we had to wait for a shuttle to take us up to the chair, or face a 20 minute walk in our ski boots.  I sat at the table and watched the traffic head up the Mountain Boulevard for awhile, waiting for the shuttle to arrive.  The shuttle finally pulled into the lot, and promptly got stuck in all the snow.  As it sat there, the traffic coming up the hill stopped.  That's not too unusual in heavy snow, trees tend to fall and block the Blvd.  I got concerned when traffic started going back down the Blvd.  After the plow pulled out the shuttle and the shuttle driver told the waiting skiers something that made them head back to their campers, Leonard and I headed out to figure out what was going on.

The power flickers from last night turned into a full on power outage.  And then, the backup generator failed.  Two feet of fresh powder and Crystal Mountain was closed.  CLOSED!

Its pretty hard not to be mad about missing out, but Josh and I decided to make the best of it and go play in the snow.

The snow was still coming down and the cars waiting to head down the Blvd started to stack up in F lot.  Here is Josh narrating our situation.

We hadn't planned on another meal in the camper so we ended up with the breakfast of champions: coffee and frozen pizza.

Jealous?

We watched a bunch of the other RVs struggle to get out of the snow.  It took us about 15 minutes of shoveling snow, but the 4 wheel drive and Josh's kick-ass tires on the Dodge got us out with no problems at all.

We couldn't leave without seeing the top so we headed up the Blvd to check it out.

It turned out that Chinook (one of the lifts) was running.  We chatted with a few folks and found out that Crystal had one small generator operating to run the lift.  Chinook was extremely slow, held frequently for weather, and left people stuck on it for quite awhile.  We elected not to try our chances in this line, as did most other folks.

We did get close enough to check out this sign though :(

As bummed as we were about missing out on an awesome ski day, it was still fun to see so much snow, and to play in with Leonard.  Check out this video of Leonard having a blast in the snow!

Stank.

Josh and I took the camper up to Crystal this past weekend.  Saturday night Crystal got about 7" of new snow; Sunday was one of the best days of the season so far.  We don't get many powder days so I'm still learning how to ski it, and Josh hasn't seen many powder days since he's become a telemark skier, so he is learning too.  He took this pic of me right after I face-planted into the snow at the bottom of a hill, I was hiking my way back up.

After our busy weekend, Josh and I were exhausted.  We treated ourselves to dinner out at Wally's Chowder House on Sunday night.  Wally's is a little restaurant in Des Moines and they make the best clam chowder in the world.  You are welcome to disagree, but you'd be wrong.  If you ever want to try it out, let us know - Josh and I would be happy to join you!

Our exhaustion continued into Monday and we spent it as a puddle on the couch watching Modern Family re-runs until the NBC Olympics coverage started.  As we were watching the Men's Moguls, Josh gave an involuntary "UGGGH, what is that smell?".  I couldn't smell it, but whatever it was, he was disgusted.  He went through all sorts of options trying to figure out where the smell was coming from.

1. Josh laid down on the floor and proceeded to pet Leonard.  He let Leonard know how gross and stinky he is, and made it clear that his feet are especially smelly.

2. Every night I have some sort of tea before bed.  It helps me relax and it has become a bedtime ritual for me.  All of my teas are delicious, but Josh thinks that some of them smell.  I suppose I understand, not all of the herbal teas can smell as good as peppermint tea.

3.  I have some grapefruit scented face wash and Josh hates it.  He thinks it stinks and he gives me a hard time every time I use it.  I'm not capable of throwing away perfectly good face wash so I've been trying to use it earlier in the night so he isn't grossed out by it when we go to bed. 

Josh never pinned down the smell, figuring it was a combo of the above 3 options, and he eventually went to shower.  I heard another "UGGGHHH, gross!", and he carried on for so long that I had to get up to see what the fuss was about.  Apparently, he found the smell.

It was his socks.

He had been tromping around in water all day at work, and his socks took the brunt of the damage.  Josh apologized to Leonard, my tea, and my face for blaming us, but the best thing was knowing that he was the cause of his own olfactory suffering.