November 23, 2006

Happy Thanksgiving. Our first Thanksgiving alone, just the two of us. We had an invitation in town, but we chose to try it our way. So far, so good. The turkey is cooking and we are relaxing.

We went skiing today. We also skied on Sunday. It is the first time we have ever skied before Thanksgiving and the first time we have skied on Thanksgiving. Our weather pattern has not been great unless you like sunny weather. This far north, sunny means cold. Our cold weather pattern has continued to be locked in. Our feet were painfully cold after skiing Sunday. Today seemed even colder, although we bought some covers for our ski boots that seemed to help. We were in no hurry to get to the resort this morning as the minus sign on the temperature gauge didn’t seem to be in a hurry to disappear.

The skiing has been a good start. The conditions have been ideal for making snow and the resort has good coverage on the lower part of the mountain. The snow is a little firm in places, but not overly icy. The resort has been relatively empty. The lower mountain is a little boring for us as it is not the conditions or terrain that we enjoy. We need to break out of this weather pattern to get some serious snow up top.

I have also found that my new skis aren’t as much fun at higher speeds. They are designed to make slalom sized turns and the conditions and lack of crowds encourage more of a downhill approach. The problem is that when I tip my skis on edge, they want to arc a tight turn. At higher speeds, I don’t have the strength to deal with the forces of such a tight turn. Eventually the skis begin to skid sideways, opening the turn up into a wider skidding turn. Skidding turns are a significant part of my skiing, but skidding long radius turns on groomed snow is just cruising.

I have found some muscles that I haven’t used for awhile. My knees are objecting to the constant squat position, especially with my repeated attempts at high speed slalom turns. The cold and limited terrain are probably helping us gradually ramp up the season. I am probably in no shape to ski deep or bumpy snow right now. We slept really well on Sunday night. I don’t think we skied as long today, so we aren’t quite as tired.

Turnagain Arm is full of ice. We could almost walk to Hope. I find it amazing to see what a 20 foot tide swing does to the ice. It breaks into large chunks that land on the mud flats, collect mud, and grow into huge blocks. This stretch of cold is more than anything we had last year so the arm is more full of ice than anything I have seen. With the sun providing interesting shadows and fog rising from sporadic openings in the ice, it is a bizarre landscape or seascape I guess. I stopped to take some pictures today and found out that I had left my memory card in my computer and my spare card had not found its way back to my pack after seeing use on our trip to Sitka. Oh well, the sunny weather doesn’t appear to be going anywhere. Neither does the ice.