This title is confusing. I get it:
– We have been on vacation 5 days total
– We have been in Canada 4 full days
– We are going skiing for the 3rd day
– We have not gone skiing for 2 days
– And a partridge in a pear tree
We embark on the 4th full day on Canadian ground, 3 of which have been on the ski hill. I woke up feeling pretty beat up from the day before, which is not really a surprise, but all-in-all nothing crazy. Slight sore throat to start the day is a tad of a bummer, but also not terrible, just more of a nuisance. Sat on the chair in the living room and realized you can actually see the slopes from here:
So yeah, D’s parents live pretty close to the ski hill which is pretty awesome. We drove to the far side like usual, got on the lift, made it to the top of the hill, and took our last group pic for this trip. Down to just 6 of us today from a high of 10 the day before:
Started the day pretty poorly, which is no surprise since I had never skied back-to-back days. I didn’t pick up where I left off the day before, and I was making all sorts of mistakes to start the day. It felt like it was a battle to do much of anything today. I didn’t fall, but staying upright was far more difficult than it should have been. I know I was tired but man, this was a much tougher day for me. On the 3rd run, D took me on a black diamond and oddly, that shook off the cobwebs a bit. I realized I was being super lazy and only paying attention to my dominant ski, and the trailing/unweighted ski was catching randomly and making my life harder than it should be. To be sure, I was tired. But I was being lazier than I should have been and making lots of sloppy mistakes.
Did the rest of the morning on blues & blacks (or is it black & blues?). Was feeling better but still tired, and not as on-point as the day before.
We grabbed some lunch with the crew at noon, then went back out for another 90 minutes to round out the day. I did end up with 1 crash which I can categorize as, “I have no idea” – basically I crashed out of nowhere. So it goes. The picture below is looking down a black diamond. As with all pictures, far steeper in real life, but as I sit here writing up this post 2+ months later, it seems relatively tame. The hill behind us is the small peak between the top and the base. They were making snow behind it.
We ended up the day with maybe 5 runs on a few different black diamond trails. As the day wore on the conditions went from the best of the 3 days to the worst. The ice really started to come out in the afternoon, and instead of knocking out a few more before we had to go, we called it a day at 4 hours.
In all, a great week of skiing and my first ever back-to-back ski days. The day wasn’t going to be much in terms of my career highlight film. But I guess when I have a day where I feel off and exhausted and sloppy and can still do 5 black diamond runs, I think that means I’ve made it to some level I certainly wasn’t at before the trip.
Strava link can be found here. Total of just over 3 hours, just over 28 miles, and just under 16,000 feet of vertical.
List of runs as best I can tell, the ski map on Strava is not exactly complete but you get the idea. This is for history, as always:
1. Franc Sud, Tobogan, Tape Cut
2. Beauvallon Haut
3. Taschereau, Beauvallon Bas, Johannsen
4. Beauchemin Haut
5. Taschereau, Desserres
6. Eric Guay
7. Franc Sud, Tobogan, Tape Cut
8. Taschereau, Desserres, Beauvallon Bas, Johannsen
9. Lowell Thomas, Fuddie Duddie
10. Lowell Thomas, Duncan Haut, Duncan Bas
Then we went home, I jumped in the hot tub, took a shower, had a cup of coffee, and immediately went to bed for an hour. To say I was exhausted is an understatement of epic proportions. This takes way more out of me than I realized.
Later than night we went to the annual family holiday party where we arrived at 6:00 pm and closed it out at midnight. Had a good time and got home and crashed hard. Family picture stolen from Facebook below. 39 people in all, apparently.
Traveling Normandy 