After two days of skiing, I’m utterly exhausted. We are going to Utah to ski for a week in February; I’m not sure I’ll be up for it. The thing about living close to skiing is that you go once a week, not once a winter for a week. I remember, now that I think about it, how when I’d go skiing in grad school or whatever for a few days, I’d be incredibly sore after the first day. These days, I’m never sore after skiing, presumably because I do it regularly.
Saturday, I went alone to Snoqualmie. It was my first solo trip skiing this year, and I just got up early and headed over there with plans to be home by early afternoon. I ended up getting home before 2 PM having skied for nearly 4 hours. Yes, close is convenient for sure. Snoqualmie is 45 minutes away, and once you park (which is generally pretty easy), you’re on the lift less than 10 minutes after you lock your car door. And vice versa – back in your car less than 10 minutes after finishing your last run of the day. But it is just not beautiful not Crystal. And Saturday, it was precipitating – a kind of wintry mix. Plenty of rain, some ice / sleet and a bit of something snow-like. The worst part of that was that my goggles don’t have windshield wipers, and I could see about as well as you could see through your windshield in the rain without wipers.
Snoqualmie is divided into four major areas, and I went to Summit east for the first time Saturday. After warming up on a couple greens, I tried a blue run and found it infinitely easier than the blues at Crystal. Crystal is just a steep mountain and the runs there are not easy. In any case, this blue did have a large tree in an inconvenient location but otherwise was not particularly difficult to deal with. It just wasn’t all that steep. I felt a bit uncomfortable to start, but I did that blue run 12 or 13 times and felt great (but tired) by the end. I just felt really comfortable and in control.
The run I did repeatedly was on the back side of the mountain. The lifts and Snoqualmie are always snow and annoying. This particular lift was brand new . . . and still annoying. As a solo rider I rode with some other “singles” and enjoyed chatting with some other skiers. It felt like a good thing to be skiing on the last day of the year.
On the first, I headed to Crystal with L and B. They did fantastic and skied their first blue at Crystal. L had skied a blue at Snoqualmie but this was a bit harder, and it was B’s first blue. B is still very much in snowplow mode and I can’t figure out how she does so well on all these steep runs. She doesn’t really go up on her edges much that I’ve noticed, just kind of snowplows back and forth, no poles. But she always seems in control and sort of merrily weaves her way down the mountain, unlike my frantic, on the edge of disaster approach to skiing.
B gets so tired after a day of skiing, she can barely function. It’s quite cute.
Bluebird day:
It was cloudy in Seattle but all blue skies at Crystal. I skied the Downhill, the “easiest blue” several times and felt good overall. I had one fall on the steepest part that ended with me sliding downhill head first, but it wasn’t a big deal. Then I had a second fall on a totally benign part of the run. I’m not sure if someone perhaps clipped my ski or if I just caught an edge. This was a rather nasty fall. I hit my head (glad I had a helmet) and was spinning a bit as I slid down the mountain, snow in my mittens and shirt and jacket and down my neck. It was the worst fall I’ve had since I started skiing again last year. I was a bit shaken up but unhurt. It was definitely my “fallingest” outing in a while; perhaps I was simply tired from the day before? Nevertheless, the girls and I had a great day. Beyond the skiing, it always brings me joy to see the beauty of Crystal and Rainier covered in snow.
Morning: 
A couple runs after a very late lunch:
I’m out of town next weekend, so I’ll probably be rusty and starting again in a couple weeks.