Champagne powder my lily-white ass!!!
And on the third day of her visit, the Caro looked out over the slopes of Apex Mountain and declared it...
We were really lucky, in that the we had a nice sunny day. I can't imagine what that place is like in a fog bank, because as soon as the sun went behind the mountain the visibility was for crap; fortunately, by that time both Dad and I were so wiped we just came home.
The problem with the sun, however, was that it melted the fresh snow just enough to make it a heavy as hell, especially on a board. Plus, the mogul runs had been skiied out so that I'd go from putting all my weight into a hard turn to get through the snow coming around a mogul and hit a patch of ice. Generally this was followed by me either bouncing off my butt or my face. Let's hear it for helmets, ladies and gentlemen!!!
Now, what I should have done was insisted on splitting up from my dad for the first hour so that I could get all the bugs of not having ridden for eight years, being on a rented board and in entirely new clothes out of my system without him waiting not-so-patiently for me. Then taken a couple of groomed, easy-going runs to get everything in order and some confidence going. Instead I had a good carve going on the run down to the lift so we started to upgrade too fast. Bad, bad, baddity-bad-bad idea. There was swearing, screaming and a tiny little bit of crying.
I had to take the first board back because the toe bindings were too loose, which was a shame because it was a good length and had a wicked edge on it (nearly unheard of on a rental.) The second one was duller but at least I wasn't slopping around as much, although I was constantly skidding out.
Finally, I put my boot down and told my dad that I wanted to do a couple of totally groomed runs, cause I was too tired for the others. We split up for a little while and I remembered exactly why I missed this so much. You see, steep, I can handle, icy, I can handle, snow I can handle, just not all on top of moguls. I hit these runs at speeds you can only reach on a weekday when there's nobody else there. They were pretty much all mine and I just flew down them. Perfect carving, faster than I ever remember going before, smooth as glass.
It was beyond glorious.
That's what I want to go out and do some more of. The f%$#ing moguls can wait.
And I am very pleased to report, that despite several hours wallowing like a pig in the snow, gong every direction imaginable, including face-first slides, end-for-end windmills and full on arse-over-teakettle rolls, I had no snow anywhere on me. And I don't just mean not *in* my clothes, although that was a blessing of epic proportions, I mean my jacket and pants were *dry* when I got in the car and so were all of my underclothes from my socks on up. The snow just sort of slid off without even being wiped.
It was AWESOME!!!
Bed now, with a metric butt-tonne of Ibuprofen in the faint hope that everything won't hurt tomorrow.
We were really lucky, in that the we had a nice sunny day. I can't imagine what that place is like in a fog bank, because as soon as the sun went behind the mountain the visibility was for crap; fortunately, by that time both Dad and I were so wiped we just came home.
The problem with the sun, however, was that it melted the fresh snow just enough to make it a heavy as hell, especially on a board. Plus, the mogul runs had been skiied out so that I'd go from putting all my weight into a hard turn to get through the snow coming around a mogul and hit a patch of ice. Generally this was followed by me either bouncing off my butt or my face. Let's hear it for helmets, ladies and gentlemen!!!
Now, what I should have done was insisted on splitting up from my dad for the first hour so that I could get all the bugs of not having ridden for eight years, being on a rented board and in entirely new clothes out of my system without him waiting not-so-patiently for me. Then taken a couple of groomed, easy-going runs to get everything in order and some confidence going. Instead I had a good carve going on the run down to the lift so we started to upgrade too fast. Bad, bad, baddity-bad-bad idea. There was swearing, screaming and a tiny little bit of crying.
I had to take the first board back because the toe bindings were too loose, which was a shame because it was a good length and had a wicked edge on it (nearly unheard of on a rental.) The second one was duller but at least I wasn't slopping around as much, although I was constantly skidding out.
Finally, I put my boot down and told my dad that I wanted to do a couple of totally groomed runs, cause I was too tired for the others. We split up for a little while and I remembered exactly why I missed this so much. You see, steep, I can handle, icy, I can handle, snow I can handle, just not all on top of moguls. I hit these runs at speeds you can only reach on a weekday when there's nobody else there. They were pretty much all mine and I just flew down them. Perfect carving, faster than I ever remember going before, smooth as glass.
It was beyond glorious.
That's what I want to go out and do some more of. The f%$#ing moguls can wait.
And I am very pleased to report, that despite several hours wallowing like a pig in the snow, gong every direction imaginable, including face-first slides, end-for-end windmills and full on arse-over-teakettle rolls, I had no snow anywhere on me. And I don't just mean not *in* my clothes, although that was a blessing of epic proportions, I mean my jacket and pants were *dry* when I got in the car and so were all of my underclothes from my socks on up. The snow just sort of slid off without even being wiped.
It was AWESOME!!!
Bed now, with a metric butt-tonne of Ibuprofen in the faint hope that everything won't hurt tomorrow.