Yesterday was my day off and I had planned with a friend, Aaron, to go for a ski lesson. However, due to a car accident on the approach to the ski hill, the bus was late and I missed the start of the lesson, so we decided to just go up and do our own thing. Aaron has been boarding for years but has only skied twice before, so was happy to come on green runs with me. We'd had a ton of snow over night and it was still snowing heavily - puking snow as they say over here - so it was a 'powder day'.
I'd never skied in powder - having only skied twice before of course! - and soon discovered it was both a blessing and a curse. It was monstrously difficult to stay upright and nigh on impossible to turn when you were up to your knees in light, fluffy snow, unable to even see where your skis were. If you slowed or stopped, the effort involved in just lifting your feet up to get on top of the snow again was monstrous and soon my legs were like jelly. However, if you got a good downhill run going, you could bomb down with relative confidence, because if you did fall your landing was as soft as snot (as my mother would say). I literally stacked it every couple of minutes and sometimes the temptation to just lie there in the comfortable snow and to catch your breath for a bit was overwhelming. On one occasion I did a huge bail face first into a ton of snow, which was apparently hilarious to see and the story has already done the rounds. I managed to drag myself up and looked around to see where my left ski, which had come off, was. It was nowhere to be found. Eventually, after poking randomly around with my pole, I found it about 4 feet away and completely hidden 2 feet under the snow. I tried to get it back on but everytime I tried to clip my boot into the bindings it sank again without a trace. A full ten minutes later, I was finally ready to head back off down the run, where Aaron and another friend Amy were waiting patiently for me.
Eventually I went to have lunch and bumped into Chris, Gravy & Zander, who were having an awesome day boarding down black runs. It certainly seems to me that snowboards have a slightly easier time of it in the deep powder due, presumably, to their width. I did one more run after lunch before deciding that my legs just wouldn't take it anymore, so I popped off to the Sunshine Inn hotel (right on the ski hill) to take advantage of the huge outdoor hot tub, where the boys and Amy joined me.
It was snowing heavily and was fairly mild by then, around -5, compared to the -25 we'd had in previous days. We ordered drinks (me a coke, the boys a pitcher of beer) and sank down to relieve our aching limbs. Pretty soon we were so warm that the idea of stepping out into the snow in our swimmers was rather inviting and so the boys went first, rubbing themselves down with snow before jumping back into the hot tub, which gave you a pleasant, all over tingling/pins & needles sensation for around five minutes afterwards. Just next to us was a gate which led out onto one of the ski runs, so the boys then decided to try lying down in the snow, face first initially:
then onto their backs:
I was reluctant at first to try it, what with my pathetic circulation an' all, but soon got swept up in the excitement and sure enough, soon discovered that lying in the snow in a bikini was an enormously exhilarating experience, and the resultant tingling well worth it:
As we sat in the hot tub, drinking beer/coke, watching skiers and snowboarders whiz past us, reflecting on our day, we couldn't stop telling each other how amazing our lives were at the moment. We are enormously lucky to be here, in an incredible place, with fantastic people, doing things we love. We truly are living the dream, and we're determined not to take even one second of it for granted.
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