They are calling for a warm, wet Winter, and after last season of no Snow until March, I was… nervous, I guess might be the best word.  When it started dumping, and kept dumping for a few days, and my friend called Tuesday morning to see if I might want to ski Wednesday… it was not a hard decision.  Yes, I had to work, but no, I had no specific reason I had to be there that day, and the forecast was for rain AT ALL ELEVATIONS Thursday and Friday.  Some days, you just need to say YES regardless.  It was a long hike up, and then we had some issues: a wonky avy beacon (it worked at home, and works now, but wasn’t reliable when we wanted it to be) and extremely frozen hands, to be exact.  M learned the miserable feeling of having your hands warm up after they got too cold; “I’m feeling really sick, I think we might want to turn around” to which I replied, “Nope, just keep climbing, they are warming up, it’ll get better!” and we found out that trying to ski avy-safe terrain with 3′ of new, sticky snow with no base is not as easy as it sounds.  It’s hard to build up any speed–so we sorta just bombed down the hills without turning much.  Still; it was great.  It was great to be up in the snow, to watch it fall, to get into the rhythm of skinning. 

I don’t ski the “raddest lines” or do anything “sick” or “hardcore” or whatever the #$%$ing buzzwords are for skiing these days. I don’t have the coolest clothes or the fattest skis or the cutest outfit.  I just love to ski. Even when things go wrong, even when the snow isn’t great, even when I have to hike 3 hours to get to decent snow, I love it, and love being out in the woods in the snow.  35 years is a long time to do something; but I’ve been skiing that long, only slightly less time than I’ve been walking and running.  God willing, the winters will keep at it, and I’ll be skiing for the next 35 years or more.  

Here’s to more ski days this winter; please let the weather forecasters be wrong!