February 19, 2007

It is good to be one of those government workers that gets odd holidays. Three day weekends are a good thing. If only I could figure out how to get more of them.

We skied all three days. Saturday was a lesson day. We worked with my boss and her daughter. They are low intermediates and I think we helped both of them accomplish a few things. It is a bit of a challenge to teach an adult and a child at the same time since they learn differently. Adults often need more explanation, if for no other reason than to reduce their fear. Kids have no fear and don’t really want to listen. It is more of a lead and demonstrate effort. I wasn’t at my best as I was fighting a migraine headache all day.

The daughter liked to go pretty fast. I was a little concerned a couple of times that she was out of control. On a slightly steep section, I skated down hill to overtake her and spun a 180 and skied backward in front of her, ready to bring her under control if necessary. Her smile quickly confirmed that she was intending to go that fast. She started laughing when the snow from my 180 sprayed up into her face. It was probably the fastest I have ever skied backward. I do get to work on my own skill set when I teach.

We skied on Sunday at Alyeska as well. The conditions are still not great, but the upper half of the mountain does have a little softness to it. Since things are pretty skied up, we focused on bump skiing. The bumps were actually quite nice in a few areas.

Today was the holiday. In the lower 48, this can be one of the busiest ski days. This led us to make numerous jokes throughout the day. We skied at Alpenglow. It was a free day for members. There might have been a dozen people skiing today. Kris joked about the Presidents’ Day lift lines. I joked about the holiday lift ticket prices. We made laps on the only chair that was open and had a blast. We traversed and hiked around the face of one of the peaks and found some chutes that dropped through the rocks. As we got lower, things widened out and led to vast fields of windblown snow. The snow was dense and a little crusted, but it provided super smooth high speed turns. It was a beautiful sunny day. Even though we haven’t had much snow lately, we still found excellent skiing conditions.

The coverage at Alpenglow was a little thin. With the melt down we had a few weeks ago and some wind scouring, the coverage was a disturbing. Crowberries are really just a ground cover so when you see them sticking through the snow, you know it is thin. We were also heading out into a rocky area to start our runs so I wasn’t surprised when I hit a rock, just disappointed. When we finished skiing, I saw the deep gouge. I guess I have some repair work to do on my new skis. I just finished a repair job on my old skis as I found a deep long gouge clean through the base when I was waxing them. This season is proving to be abusive to my equipment.