Optimism

The weather forecast shows a storm moving in tonight or tomorrow, so being the eternal optimist that I am, I decided to preserve my legs for the upcoming powder day/s by just cruising around a few groomers. Best run of the day was high speed race turns down Two O'Clock. Here's the GPS data.

An easy hour

It was a glorious day on the mountain today - great snow, very few people and the sun was shining. The only problem was that we just got back from being in Dublin for the past two and half weeks, so all those extra red blood cells were gone and I soon found myself puffing like a steam train. So I put in just an easy hour. Well sort of. I did hit the 2.30 trees for a bit. And the Sundown liftline. And I did tear up a couple of groomers. But other than that an easy hour. And I was very happy with the way I skied technically.

Here's the GPS data.

Before you ditch your other distribution channels...

For several years airlines have been squeezing their traditional distribution channels like travel agents and driving business to their own websites. American Airlines took it a step further recently and withdrew its flights from other websites like Orbitz and Expedia.

I'm not criticising the strategy. Just saying that if you are going to do that you probably need to be extra, extra, extra careful about making sure that your website works!

Last clinic for the season

I had my last Local's Clinic for the season (I'm going to try telemark skiing next year and I'll definitely want to enrol in a clinic to learn that so it's definitely not my last clinic ever).

I arrived 45 minutes before kick off time so I decided to get in a lazy 6,00 vertical ft before we started (Gondola, Storm Peak, Thunderhead) which was a nice warm up. Teh morning was fairly casual with technical drills in Wally World, but the afternoon picked up with mostly bump skiing in the fog (bumps are extra interesting when you can't see them!).

Best run of the day was the bumps to skiers right of Cyclone.

Here's the GPS data.

Christmas Tree Bowl

I decided for a little variety today to ski the Christmas Tree Bowl. This is part of our double black diamond terrain at the very top of the mountain. As soon as I started I remembered why I rarely ski this part of the mountain - it's about 20 yards of super-steep terrain and then a long flat run out and even with the large amount of snow we've got there's still plenty of exposed rocks. All in all a complete waste of time.

Generally though the snow is still in great condition. Best run of the day was definitely the 3.30 trees. A made a point of skiing it fast and aggressive and I always ski better when I do that. The trouble is that fast and aggressive takes a lot of physical and mental energy so you can't do it all the time, so I spent the 45 minutes before that taking it easy and skiing poorly.

A (rarely) groomed Vertigo on the way home was also fun, but give me powder bumps on this baby any day!

Here's the GPS data.

Quick Hit

I've been so busy the last few days (and it was really, really, really cold over the weekend) that I haven't been out since Thursday. So today I only managed an hour and half of skiing, but that's still better than nothing.

Visibility was poor so I didn't bother with the helmet cam, but the snow was nice - soft and buttery - and the mountain was deserted. Still some idiot tele skier nearly managed to run into me on mid-Rainbow; message to that guy: "I do not have eyes in the back of my head mate!"

Here's the GPS data.