Feeling young

When I saw the snow report this morning - four inches - I thought big deal (although it is enough to break the record!) and almost didn't go out today. Which would have been bad. Really bad. Because I had an awesome day skiing.

I met a guy called Seth this morning who is nineteen years old, very fit and has been skiing since he was three and we had a great time skiing together. Definitely a cheaper way for a guy my age (45 next month) to feel young than buying a red sports car.

Anyway, here's the map of what I skied today exported from my GPS unit to Google Maps.


Let's use Google Earth to zoom in on the best bits.

We began with the classic Steamboat tree runs - Shadows, Lights Out, Twilight and Closet.


Then we hit the trees off to skiers' left of Sunnyside. There's a steep glade hidden in there with some very large rocks (circled in the image below - the rocks are the white shapes) which provide some great drop offs when the snow is deep like it is this year. As a bonus there were plenty of fresh lines in there too.


Also good after that were the trees between Vagabond and Rudi's Run. For some reason I'd skied the lower half of this before but only the top half for the first time last Friday. But I'll be skiing this a whole lot more in the future. And the (large) bumps of White Out were pretty good too.


Now for the stats:

Vertical ft: 16,530
Maximum speed: 39.3 mph
Distance skied: 14.4 miles
Time skiing: 1:22:15
Time stopped: 1:17:43 (mostly the stop for lunch - there weren't any real lift lines today)
Time riding lifts: 1:30:10