Another good weekend

Gotta love mountain country weather. Yesterday was a lovely, sunny day, but today we where supposed to have another storm. A smart person would have picked Saturday of this weekend for a ski day, as blue skis and fresh powder are hard to beat. Of course I'm not always a smart person, so I made plans to ski with my girlfriend on Sunday even though a storm was suspected. The wind was howling at my house this morning, and I actually considered bagging my ski day. My girlfriend invited me down to her house for homemade waffles for breakfast, and her husband, the ski patroller, checked the weather. It didn't storm in the valley at all Saturday night, but as it turned out that Brighton received 24 inches of fresh snow. So we decided to hit the slopes after all, and it was a glorious, albeit snowy day.

I'm a decent skier, but not a great powder skier, so a good powder day is always a challenge for me. As a working person who just gets to ski weekends, I simply don't get enough powder practice. Today was one of those days where the snow was almost too deep to ski. At one point we headed out on a trail that hadn't been skied much, and I decided to try out some untracked powder. Next thing I know I'm in powder up to my thighs, but the slope wasn't terribly steep, so my skis stopped and were totally mired under the snow. Getting those skis out of the snow and back on the skiable trail was not easy. After that I tried to stick to spots that had been skied on and packed down a little. A little later I missed a turn and found myself in the same predicament. Talk about a work out! One of these days I'd like to become a good powder skier like my ski patroller friend. He makes it look so flippin' easy as he skis throught the trees in search of the powder shots. Of course one nice thing about skiing is that folks of different abilities can have fun together. We can all ride the same chair, but when we reach the top my patroller friend can do the extreme stuff, while his wife and I ski slightly tamer places. I'm faster than she is, so I just stop and wait now and then. We then all meet at the lift to do it again. What a great ski day!