Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Ski report

Fog
When I went skiing the week before last, the top of the mountain was completely fogged in. The main high-speed 4 person lift to the top was closed, but they had the very old two-seater-no-safety-bar one running. I took this to the top, and almost regretted it. Visibility was less than 10 feet. Here is an actual picture I took with my phone:See the tree? Luckily, I knew the mountain well enough - I wouldn't go off any cliffs because the top portion is a bowl (with very few trees), so all I had to do was keep going down - and stay on the groomed bits. The problem is estimating speed when you can't see anything. I couldn't tell if I was skiing uphill, across, or down, and kept realizing I was skiing much faster than I thought. It was the weirdest feeling. If I looked down at my skis, I would start to get vertigo, so I kept my head up and my eye out for the very few other idiots skiers who had ventured up. I actually found it fun, in a strange way, so I did it two more times before moving on to more visible parts of the resort. It snowed on and off, and Lake Tahoe was almost indistinguishable from the menacing sky.
A lot of kids that age would be screaming
While I was riding a lift up last Friday, I watched a mother slowly working her way down some moguls with her 6 or 7 year old son, telling him exactly where to go and how to do it. I skied down, and just before I got to them, the little boy made it to the edge of the groomed area, at which point his skis flew out from under him, and he went sliding off down the fairly steep slope sprawled out on his back, slowly rotating clockwise. He slid about 20 or 30 feet and did one complete rotation before coming to a stop. His mother worriedly skied down, and as I skied by, he looked up at her and exclaimed,"That was FUUUUN!!! Can I learn how to do THAT?"

4 comments:

Hairslave 24/7 said...

You are absolutely looney toons.

Laurie said...

All of them?

Hairslave 24/7 said...

every single one...

Laurie said...

Except those horrible baby Looney Toons, I hope. I hate those.