outstanding! superb! fabulous! far and away, one of the best days of my life.
sunday and monday we were pretty socked in, and snow was falling around us, and we still had a grand time.
today, however, the sky cleared, and the sun shone warm and bright, swimming in a deep azure sea. the rocky crags to our east, invisible since saturday, outlined the feminine sky with masculine force. the peaks to our west, prepare to bear the scars of a thousand brightly colored skiiers and snowboarders.
I had a conference call scheduled for today, but last night I convinced myself that my attendance wasn’t necessary, and anyway, I’m on vacation. the situation is a little weird, the guy who scheduled the meeting didn’t check my schedule, or if he did, he decided it didn’t matter. I told him I would be out of town at this time, but whatever.
so I blew it off. it will be fine. I’ve been through this countless times. you’ll see.
now I know I made the right decision. determined to decouple my schedule from the kids, who asserted that they’d be delighted to sleep in a little bit, which to them meant probably 11 or 12, I set my mind to wake early. I examined the schedules, and learned the buses start at 8:00, and was reminded that the lifts open at 8:30. my plan was to be in line at 8:30, and head over peak 7, as I had been advised by a local. peak 7 is not acessible from any of the bases, and serves blue slopes only. this gives it a number of properties — you have to go out of your way to find it, and you have to be at least a marginally competent skiier just to get there.
this cuts out a lot of nonsense. the six seat lift runs super fast, hardly ever stops, and serves six or eight really fun slopes.
so I made a bee line over there, getting to the top of independence superchair before 9:00. there were only a handful of other lucky skiiers there with me. words cannot do justice to the view I beheld. It was similar to many views you can find around here, some of which we have photographed, but was unique in its freshness. the snow of the past few days made the slopes inviting and forgiving, and the groom lines from the night before gave the slopes a uniform appearance, like fresh bed linen or ice cream.
I flew down monte cristo I don’t know how many times, probably four or five, the first few runs, most of the time without a single other soul in sight, the tall snow crested firs to my right and left, the rocky crags in front of me, the crystal blue sky above, I simply cannot convey the joy I felt. I was getting more confident in my skills, “keeping my line tight” as they say, slaloming to control my speed, but trying to avoid that as much as possible, once I found myself familiar enough with each of these slopes in turn, I fairly flew straight down, as fast as I could, just holding the edge of my competence in front of me by a hair’s breadth.
the only sounds were the crunching snow under my skis, and their occasional flap-flap as I cut and turned.
later, lizzy would ask me how many runs I went down, and I truly couldn’t answer precisely, but it was a lot.
in the morning, I probably covered peak 7 completely, doing monte cristo 4 times, angels rest 4 times, and lincoln meadows and wirepatch once each.
at first, there were practically no waits. you’d just run down, and get back on the lift, and zoom up and do it again. it seemed to me I was going pretty fast, and each run was about 5 minutes, followed by maybe 5 minutes to get back up. [TBD href audio]
toward the end I started getting a little tired, and I think somehow my bindings got slightly loose. it seemed harder to lift my right ski to cut left. but just the right one. maybe it was just fatigue. this is what I was thinking when I decided to cut over to claimjumper and head back to the base of peak 8. halfway down my phone rang in my pocket. I don’t mind saying the combination of the surprise, the sound and maybe my fatigue, just then I cut into some fresh powder, and took a spill. nothing serious, though.
perhaps needless to say, I didn’t answer the phone. and of course it was anita. when I got to the bottom I called her back. she said she was already in line for the colorado superchair, on her way up to vista haus. so it was pretty good timing.
I met her quite promptly, and was happy to rest a little bit after more than 3 hours of pretty much solid skiing under pretty much perfect conditions. thank you Lord!
we enjoyed a wonderful lunch.
I was happy to learn the kids had skiied their bunny slopes all morning as well, and had a fine time too. all three rode rode down together.
afterward, I had an equally fine afternoon, doing northstar perhaps 4 times, zooming down and back up the rocky mountain superchair, which perhaps by an odd circumstance had really short lines. just zoom down and zip up, over and over. what a life!
when I felt like I had mastered northstar, and wanted something a little different, I took claimjumper once more, and before I knew it, it was 3 pm. so this time I zipped across to the colorado superchair, and like lots of other folks it turned out, chose to take the four o’clock down right around 4 o’clock. what a ride that was. it was a moderately challenging blue at the top, and turned into a moderate green at the bottom, but there were more folks on this run than any other I had taken today. a lot of them, likely more tired than me, taking spills here and there, so it was kind of like an obstacle course, even the green part of the slope was pretty challenging. and a number of us were trying to go fast once we cleared the caution zone.