April 8, 2007

Spring is… well…springing. After months of sunny and cold, we had a couple weeks of sunny and warm, and now a little rain. Things are melting fast. We can see our road and some of our driveway. Grass has emerged in a few places, but the snow is still pretty deep. Things are turning dirty brown as the melting snow reveals layers of dirt - and animal droppings. The moose and dogs in the neighborhood seemed to have evenly covered everything. It is at least amusing to see some of the locations that moose have visited over the last several months.

We stopped at a bar on Friday night for a celebration. The roommate of a coworker has landed a job in Japan teaching English. It was a small group when we were there, but as always, it is amusing to hang out with highly diverse people.

We went skiing on Saturday afternoon. It was the most difficult skiing conditions I have ever seen. The top of the mountain got over a foot of heavy snow. The bottom of the mountain had rain. The lower half of the mountain was spring conditions, fun deep granular snow. We would have spent more time on the lower mountain, but it was raining pretty hard. The spots on our goggles made it hard to see and the rain was soaking through our aging waterproof ski gear.

The top of the mountain was low visibility with falling snow. The deep snow was heavy and challenging to ski in areas that were still untracked. Since the only thing this snow was really good for was making snowmen, tracked snow was nearly impossible to ski. The tracks of previous skiers left a ridge of packed snow followed by a zone of heavy snowballs that deflected the path of the skis, but never both in the same direction. It required aggressive, strong skiing. I think Kris wasn’t in the mood for being that strong as she kept lagging behind on the tough stuff. When we decided to take what might have been our last run down North Face for the season, she crashed in the first few turns, leaving a ski high above her final resting point. Luckily a skier behind her brought her ski down to her.

Between the brutal upper mountain and the damp lower mountain was a zone of bizarre snow. The main runs were packed hard and rutted. It was like ice, only not quite as hard and nowhere near as smooth. As we skied down the mountain, we could never be sure if the feeling of the snow was changing or our legs were giving out. It was usually a little of both. We called it quits after just a few hours of torture.

We didn’t even ski today. It was still the same conditions and we were hurting from yesterday. We mostly took it easy. I did a little shopping. I am working on some organizational improvements for hauling gear in the truck. We have been thinking about getting a larger tent for car camping. We think we can find something nice for our purposes without having to spend the money or take on the storage inconvenience of a trailer.

We did get out for a walk along the greenbelt in the afternoon. The snow is still pretty deep and packed on the trail. Off trail, it is deep and soft. Walking off trail meant sinking in consistently over the tops of our boots. Walking on trail meant sometimes sinking a few inches, sometimes staying on top, but always having an uneven base under each foot that worked our lower legs excessively. We were exhausted from our walk. We did see four moose, though.