Merry Christmas everyone! The day started cold. But hey, at least it was clear!
Hopefully it was a good day for everyone reading out there. Talked to Julia this morning and she’s feeling better. You could hear it in her voice and that made me feel a little better about the whole thing. After the call we hit the road for another day at the mountain. I enjoy the snow cloud that forms from the snow-making machines. From the distance it looks like the mountain is on fire:
From the parking lot. We drive around to the north side where none of the tourists go so we can park close. The main entrance is nothing short of a total & complete zoo.
I try not to take anything for granted at this point. What I mean by this is like this: Just because I had a pretty good day on Sunday, I’m not going to assume today I’ll pick up where I left off. I more or less try to start each day at scratch and hope I pick up just a bit more than the last time. Today it turns out I definitely didn’t start at scratch, and I’m moving up in my ability, slowly but surely.
I did several black diamonds today and as D said, these are not Camelback black diamonds. There was one that we did, towards the end, where my speed and the ice was definitely pushing the boundary of what I am comfortable with. I made it from top to bottom without hitting the deck but that pretty much tapped out everything I had. Felt good, definitely making progress. But man, this takes its toll after a while. Mostly, turning on ice at high speed is a tough one for me, and these black diamonds sometimes force you into situations you can’t control in the way you want. As I get better at this, I can handle more. But I’m far from being able to handle all this stuff. I kind of really like that I have so much more room to grow.
While I didn’t crash on that run, I did crash 3 times today. I have given them all names.
1. The Sunbathing Snowboarder. I’m sure you know where this is going. Cruising down the hill, trying to do my thing, on the edge of my ability at times, when we come upon what appears to be either a dead, or sunbathing, snowboarder. I know the theory here is that they’re waiting for you to pass, but when you hit a patch of ice and just can’t turn like you want to, yeah, gravity intervenes when you’re forced to try to push yourself to make a turn you can’t. When I came up from it, she asked, “Are you ok?”
2. The Ice Wall. The Soleil (sun) side is an awesome, fun run with a lot of snow but the very end of it has this ice wall that was littered with people walking down the side when we got there the second time today. As if it’s not enough that the thing drops down a hill of ice, the people on the side make it more difficult than it would normally be, because you lose a lot of turn radius. On top of that, the middle had poles indicating there’s a hazard. I made it down the ice wall but then slammed into a few piles of snow at the bottom and ate it. This was the next-to-last run, and I was pretty much on E at this point.
3. Getting Tired & Stupid. Absolutely out of nowhere, on a flat section connecting 2 trails, my left ski went randomly out and I hit the deck. This was on the last run and I was just doing all sorts of dumb things at this point. I will put it this way. You know how when you started mountain biking and you got tired, once in a while your front tire would hit a rock and your bars would twist seemingly on their own? Think about how that never happens to you on the MTB anymore. Well, this was sort of like that. Before I knew it my bars were in my gut and I was crashing to the ground.
In all, 5 hours out there today. That’s more than I’ve ever done. Add in the black diamonds and this is a watermark day in Norm’s Ski History. We’re heading back tomorrow, which will be another first in the fact I have never skied back-to-back days. I will go into it like I always do, with moderate expectations and then we’ll see where the day goes.
Strava link can be found here. In all 31.5 miles, 3:29 moving time, and just about 16,500 feet of vertical. Though we didn’t start the GPS from the start, so we missed at least 1 run on this.
D helping make dessert, Oma’s classic Chocolate Log.
After the day was done, hit a Starbucks on the way home, relaxed and had some snacks, jumped in the hot tub, took a hot shower, then settled in for turkey dinner. Really good full day #3 overall, and day #2 on the ski hill. At dinner, I started to already feel that the bed was going to be moving later tonight. My head is still in motion and I haven’t even laid down yet.
A Note About XC-Skiing
The original plan was going to be something like this:
1. Ski
2. Snowshoe or XC ski
3. Ski
4. XC ski or snowshoe
5. Ski
Unfortunately there’s no snow on the ground up here. This time of year is pretty hit-or-miss, this year being a miss. 2 years ago there was nothing, 3 or 4 years ago there was 2 feet. You really never know what’s going to be on the ground so when we got up here we were a little surprised to find that there was almost nothing. It would have been nice to get out for a try but it wasn’t to be. On a better note, D & her dad found 2 pairs of XC skis for us, plus poles. We’ll likely just buy boots since the investment is pretty minimal at this point. We’ll get some time to do this the first weekend in March, the day of/after the first Short Track, when we are going to Mohunk for a night.
Here’s a picture of the front yard, with the copious amounts of snow accumulation:
Traveling Normandy 
Great post 😁
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