Saturday, February 09, 2008

Best week ever

With only eight inches of new light snow, today wasn't the best day ever (although it was up there as one of the great powder days) but when you combine another powder day today with a powder day yesterday, and another the day before that and another on Tuesday, then this would be my best week of skiing ever. It feels like a continuous blur of floating through the aspens breathing snow!

I was out pressing glass at the gondola at 8 am with a new friend Brian and our parish priest Father Ernest (yes it is wierd skiing with your priest, but he's a nice guy and good snowboarder). We began with a traverse across to Norther for first tracks and then rode up Four Points for more fresh tracks on Nelson's Run.

By then Pony Express was open so we hit the aspens off Middle Rib where there was plenty of deep snow both on the marked trail and in the trees. On the second run, just as I'd completed a really fast, smooth and agressive line through the trees, I snagged the remains of a broken branch with my shoulder, ripping the right arm of my jacket to shreds (I needed a new one anyway). While I was still out skiing in the cold my shoulder felt fine but now I'm inside and it's warmed up I can feel it (not to mention see a rather large bruise) but as potential ski injuries go it's pretty minor so I'm not complaining.

After that we cut through Nash Junction, up the Bar-UE chair and then across to Shadows where the snow was also deep and light. Soon after that Brian and Ernest were ready to call it quits, but in the meantime I'd run into my old friend Dave, so we gave Shadows another go (even better the second time around) followed by Twilight which was a little drifty but still nice, by which time I was absolutely exhausted. On the way back down I decided to try something different from the usual Oops/ Vertigo combo and found some nice stashes to skier's left on Valley View to reward me.

All in all an epic day to top off an epic week.

There are more storms forecast for next week so it ain't over yet, but whatever happens tonight, tomorrow I'm going to rest. I promise. Even if there's three feet of new snow. Well maybe not if there's three feet. But two feet. Well ok, not two feet. But one foot. No, not one foot. But anything less than a foot of new snow tonight and I'm resting tomorrow. Really.

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