Ski Day 14: Me Patrol @ Meadows

Looking to the east, from Discovery Ridge

I should have been doing this all along - taking a midweek day to go skiing. I'd been hiding behind excuses most of my sabbatical, and in large part I still feel they were justified. I wanted the knee to have more rest between ski days. I wasn't going to waste the gas to go ski if things weren't going to be basically awesome. Then of course, things were basically awesome when we were in Hawaii. But being in Hawaii was basically awesome also.

Okay, Hawaii was better than awesome. Awesome times Hawaii minus skiing. I'm not entirely sure what that equals, but I know it's better than awesome.

Anyway, I knew there'd been some fresh snow up there recently, and I figured that they've been getting enough at Timberline and Meadows that things should be pretty damn good at either place. But I was in a Meadows mood today, so I drove the extra distance.

I wasn't disappointed. I have a feeling the weather was probably better at Meadows than Timberline. Seemed like things up high and to the west were more socked in than where I was. The sun was struggling to make an appearance, and for a while it did. I was too busy skiing to worry about taking a lot of pictures, though. And I didn't bring the 'big camera' - I just had the phone.

Looking uphill from outside Patrol HQ

Everything felt great, too. I think working on fundamentals the last couple weeks with the apprentices rubbed off on me a little bit. I found that I was skiing very balanced and smooth, up until I started getting fatigued. I thought maybe I would just be in the mood for cruising all day, just making big GS/SG turns on the groomers, since a lot of the off-groom was dust-on-crust. This was until I went up high and skied off of the Cascade lift.

The visibility up there was terrible, and certainly not conducive to flying solo into Heather Canyon, but I did pick my way down the ridge on Elevator, which was a delightful run. It would have been better not skiing by Braille, but the snow there was a good mix of soft windpack and some powder drifts here and there.

I skied pretty much all over the mountain, but found that I was having the most fun over off Shooting Star, since the groomers over there were holding up well to the midweek traffic, and the runs that don't get a lot of direct sun (3-D, O-Ring, and Rock Garden) were loads of fun. A little bumpy and tracked out, but I did take the occasional face shot when I found some high-shin-deep pow. I was having a ball.

The Mazot. A little cafe on the mountain.

Somewhere in all this, I ducked into the Mazot for a Vitamin Water and a cookie, but other than that I took no breaks aside from the lift rides. Definitely needed the ice on the knee when I got home.

I'm gonna have to do this more often.

Ski Day 13: Eclipsed @ Ski Bowl

Mt. Hood in the afternoon. Didn't have time to wait for the clouds to move off.

Sunday was day 13 for the season, eclipsing my total from the injury-shortened previous season. It started out snowing, changed to rain, then some strange glowing orb made an appearance in the sky. Gotta love Oregon weather. At least the skiing was good all day, even in the slop.

I was feeling good about getting back on the hill for day 13. It's actually a lucky number for me, and a favorite number as well. We had actually got back-to-back weekends of training for my apprentice team, so hopefully some continuity there. And with any luck, we'd have nothing to do but train all day - no cases.

We did have that bit of luck, which the group desperately needed. There were a couple of the guys that had been picking up what we'd been giving them and doing well, but the bulk of the group needed a full day's work. I tried out a couple more carving drills to get them skiing with a better stance and make smoother turns, and it seemed like that was working. We moved on to the sideslipping stuff, and that's where I learned something.

We'd been doing these drills in short bursts, mostly because I was worried they'd get bored doing the same exact thing over and over, but also because we hadn't had a REAL full day to work on this stuff - I was trying to cram in two days of work into one. What I ended up learning was something I should have known all along - the longer we let them run each drill, the better they got. They just needed time to find their individual comfort points with each of the things we were giving them. Things really started clicking in the afternoon.

We moved on to the "rope-a-goat" drills, which simulate being on the tail rope of a sled. The tail roper gets into his normal tail-roping position, but at the other end of the rope, instead of a sled, is one of the other apprentices. This got them to see what all the sideslipping drills were all about and why they're important, which helped them out a great deal also.

We rounded up to RC to grab the training sleds to put them away, but the upper bowl was too inviting to not take a run up there. So we did. It was a little chunky, and was starting to set up some since the sun was no longer shining on it, but it was fun. We paused briefly to take in the view of Mt. Hood, and to allow some of the group who hard yard-saled above us to collect themselves and catch up. We went back up, grabbed the sleds, did a brief demo of running them unloaded, and headed off toward the "Palace".

The apprentices wait, taking in the view, chatting with JG.

Our top two skiers in the apprentice group got a shot at running the unloaded sleds first, but we did get everyone at least a short run in the handles. Hopefully, they'll continue their progress next week while I'm off at the avalanche refresher.

The knee felt pretty good all day, but was fairly sore at the end. Showing off for your apprentice crew is hard work.