Skiing!!

Believe it or not, it has not been a great ski season on the mountain. Yes, back in December, there were buckets of snow and cold temps but temperatures warmed up at the higher elevations and the snow melted off. It has actually been a drier than usual winter and the mountains have not been receiving all the normal snow fall for this time of year.

So needless to say, we had been itching to get out and ski this year. I got new goggles and a helmet for Christmas and Russ has a new Fridgieware suit, so we were both anxious to get out and use our new gear.

The past few weeks, it has been wetter in the city and colder in the mountains, which means the ski areas are getting some good snow base building and the lifts were open so we decided we'd head up the mountain to find some decent skiing. We have been skiing Cooper Spur a great deal the past few seasons so we decided to try a new place this year. We were looking for some for some new slopes, still on the easy-not-too-steep side, just longer and different. So we stooped at Ski Bowl a popular skiing area on Mt. Hood and an hour out of Portland. It was a sleet snow mix, on our arrival but it was cold and there was plenty of snow on the ground. So up we went on the chair lift... Well it sounds that easy, but it isn't in my case. You have to go down a hill then up a little slope to get to the line to get on the ski lift. It had been a year since I had these long boards strapped to my feet. I got the down hill part okay but I didn't get the momentum to get back up the hill to the line. So I got half way there then stopped and proceeded to go backwards down the hill again. I am sure it looked pretty comical. Luckily, I remembered the fail safe method to stopping when all is going wrong on skis; fall over. So I did. and that stopped me. I decided to take my skis off, walk up the hill to the ski lift line and then put my skis on. It worked out much better.

So after the crash course refresher in skiing, I felt pretty confident about going down the big hill with skis. After all, I can always just fall down if it wasn't going well, right? So up Russ and I went on the lift. This was a higher and longer lift than I had ever been on, it followed the contour of the mountain and the mountain got steep really quick, I had to admit, I was getting pretty nervous, would this be too much slope for me? I can always take my skis off and walk down...

Russ was very helpful though he kept reminding me of all I new and helped me take one step at a time. We got off the lift and I actually made it over to the slopes edge without falling over, so far so good! There was a short slope down to a warming hut and then another lift to go up to a higher-steeper black diamond run. I looked around for the green circles; the easy runs. There were several to be found. Though they still looked steep to me. But Russ couched me and back and forth I went down the small slope and I realised I remembered I knew more than I thought! So it was down the slope next slope I went and I had completed the run, before I knew it! I started really slow at first, but I figured out I could control my speed pretty well and got more adventures with putting my skis in "french fry" mode and going fast. We made many passes down the hill that day. The temperature dropped and the sleet turned to snow, I had to switch over to my fridgeware suit too, as it was much warmer. Jade and Lucky had some good runs too. It was a fun time on the mountain!