Priorities

I woke up this morning to see at least 8 inches of new snow on my deck. I knew that it was new, because when I went to bed last night, there was none on that same deck. I decided that this morning I would have to skip a shower and complete breakfast. Getting to the hill before it got tracked out was of utmost importance. I grabbed my fat skis and headed out.

Unfortunately, there was 8 inches of snow to clear off of my car. I frantically wiped, brushed, and shoveled snow out of the way to enable me to leave the driveway. I even threw my skis in the backseat to avoid the extra 30 seconds it would have taken to clear the snow off of the Thule box. Should have put them in last night, I thought. Oh well, I can't dwell on past mistakes.

I parked my car, and changed into my boots, and boarded the Grand Summit Express as fast as I could. There were very few tracks on Exhibition, and I considered taking a lap down the main face, perhaps grabbing some first tracks on Ego Alley, before heading over to the steeps of the North Face. Nope. Instead I headed down Challenger, before veering off onto PDF and Plummet. Than it was two quick laps through the Epiphany glades, before skirting the ski area border for a few runs though the dense trees of The Trials.

The morning went by fast, my iPod blasting through the headphones of my new Giro. Skiing through Vermont cream cheese through the forest, whooshing between the branches, with a few trips down the usually icey mogul field of Ripcord. After three hours of nonstop laps down the North Face, I headed in for some fuel.

By the time I finished lunch, the snow began to turn into freezing rain. But there was still some good snow in the trees, and over at Sunbrook there was still some untracked to be found in the Darkside of the Moon. Denser trees and being away from the expert terrain on the north face left a few afternoon stashes for me.

By 2 PM my jacket was coated in ice, as the rain began to freeze on contact. My ass was numb, frozen after too many rides on ice coated chairlifts. The trees were chopped up, and a crust had formed on top of my cream, the whooshes replaced with crunches. A trip to the Carinthia side to check out Claim Jumper glades proved to be an exercise in futility. I called it a day, went home, put in a half-hour spin on the trainer, and finally took a shower.