New Year's Day Skiing!

Will woke me up by banging on the front door at 9 am.  Dallan had gone off to the slopes with another friend, Wyatt, so Will came home to get ready for our family trip up the mountain.

Helena came home right at 10 am, just as she promised.

Peder called at 10:30 to cancel.  Erik wasn't coming, either.  Drat!

Peder's cancellation took the sails right out of Helena.  She didn't want to go up to the slope and try snowboarding without someone there to help her.  We offered to pay for a snowboarding lesson, but she just didn't want to do it anymore.  So that left just Will and me.

So, off we went!

 Here is Will heading off to his first run down the mountain.  I went straight to the bunny hill.  There was TONS more snow than on Christmas Day, and it was powder!  You can't tell from looking at these photos, but we were standing on more than five feet of snow.  I finally realized just how icy the conditions had been on Christmas Day.  Icy snow makes a scraping noise.  Powdery snow makes a creaking sound.

 Look at how gorgeous it was on the mountain!!!  And yes, very cold.  The high for the day was 17 degrees, but up there it was more like 10 degrees.  It looks so serene, but it was actually pretty noisy.  There were lots of people there this time.  All the talking of people and creaking of snow was quite loud.

 After practicing on the bunny hill for about 20 minutes, I was ready to buy a lift pass and try the mountain again.  I just couldn't let that 'walk of shame' on Christmas Day be the end of it!

Here is a secret about snow.  Every different type of snow makes for different skiing, too.  On the icy slopes of Christmas Day, I had very little trouble steering the skis, but a lot of trouble stopping them.  On the powder snow of New Year's Day, I struggled with steering them, but stopping was a bit too easy!  I toppled myself several times when the skis quit moving before my upper body did!

That meant that I had several great opportunities to practice standing back up on the skis without resorting to popping myself out of the bindings.  I managed it three times!  I am chuckling to myself because I feel so proud of myself for being able to stand up!

This time on the lift, I was able to enjoy the ride a bit, and even took a video of Will and I going up.  I had to take my right hand out of my glove to do that and even a couple of minutes out in the raw air was enough to make my hand HURT with the cold!  By then I had the balaclava on covering my face.

I exited the lift gracefully this time and approached the first run with only a little nerves.  That first run was not bad!  There were a couple of sections that felt too steep for me, but the swear words only came out to play twice.  Will was so patient again and showed me all the easiest slopes down.

It took me a LONG time to work my way down the slopes, but the fact is, I MADE IT!  I didn't give up.  When we got back to the lifts, there wasn't enough time for me to creep down the mountain again before we had to leave.  I had to return my rental skis to the sports store in town before 6 pm.  So I went to the cafe to thaw out my fingers and toes while Will rode the lift to the top (higher than he went with me) and skied back down.

We both had a great time!  I think it is time for me to look for some skis online.

 Will took this shot of me on our way back down the mountain.

 We were in time to see some really spectacular colors on the mountain as the sun was setting!

Happy New Year, everyone!