All things considered, it was a great week. The snow was in pretty good shape considering that they hadn't had any significant new snow in about a month. They do a really good job of grooming and the weather had been cold enough to preserve what snow they had. I skied the whole mountain except for one closed run and a few areas that faced into the sun and were too crusty for my tastes. Didn't do much tree skiing since I was usually skiing alone. Plus, they don't maintain any treed runs so you never know what you're going to run into. Nothing like a fallen tree buried just beneath the snow to ruin your day. Our first ski day was Sunday. The snow was firm and fairly dry and made for fast skiing. There were lots of times where I was skiing as fast as I felt was safe considering the snow and crowd conditions and people would still fly by me. My only injury (other than the usual sore muscles) was a headache and stiff neck from banging my head on the snow while snowboarding.

Sun Valley has a fantastic cruiser run called Warm Springs that runs from the top to bottom. Sunday afternoon it seemed like everybody decided to ski/board it at the same time. I saw more collisions and near-misses during one run than I had during three weeks of skiing last year. Lots of idiot skiers flying down the slopes without making any efforts to avoid the skiers/snowboarders below them. The ski patrol didn't seem to care. Their "uniforms" consisted of black vests with a single red cross on the back. It was hard to tell them apart from the tourists. I skied a run with a 65 year old snowboarder that was very good. I was following him and his friend down Warm Springs trying to follow their tracks when I saw the shadow of a skier about to pass me. I did a hard turn away from him and he just missed me and the other snowboarder. He then skied straight into the back of Carl (the old snowboarder) without trying to turn away from him. Carl saw him over his shoulder at the last second and was able to turn just enough so they bounced off each other wihout injury. Could have been very nasty If Carl hadn't had such good reflexes. I decided to find less crowded runs after that. The rest of the week wasn't very crowded but there were still more than a few idiots going too fast.

On Tuesday I decided to try hard boots on a snowboard to see if I could learn to carve. I didn't have too much success and the boots killed my feet. I spent most of my time looking back up the mountain to make sure no skiers would slam into me. I was only hit by one skier but it was at a very slow speed and didn't knock me down. On the same day, our illustrious club president, Len Cribbs, got into a fight with a snowboarder. Supposedly the sequence of events went something like this: Snowboarder nearly knocks Len down from behind. Len stops and asks "What the Hell's the matter with you?" Snowboarder replies "I suppose you think that was my fault?!" "You're damn right I do you @$%&^!", responds Len. The snowboarder then went at Len and proceded to knock him down. Len "locked up with him" and they both went rolling down the slope. Len says he got one good shot in to the guy's face. Len's wife, Lori, was a witness to the whole scene and came skiing down yelling for them to break it up while waving her ski poles. The boarder evidently didn't want anything to do with her and took off down the run. Another member of our club gave chase but the boarder made it on to the next lift before he could catch him. The ski patrol was supposedly notified by the lift attendant but we never heard whether or not they did anything. Len came out of it with a small bruise below his eye and will be the subject of many snowboarder/skier jokes for the next year or three. Most of the snowboarders were riding alpine hardboot setups made for carving as opposed to the freestyle, grunge snowboarders that perpetuate the bad reputation. The average age of snowboarders there was probably around 40. Lots of skiers and sbowboarders were wearing helmets. I should probably get one....

I became know as the PowerBar Kid since my usual lunch was a PowerBar or two while on the lift. I carried a bottle of water with me and I'd usually stop in for a pit-stop at lunch time and bug everybody else by encouraging them to eat faster so we could get back to skiing. Of course, this was only on the days when I got tired of skiing alone and wanted to do some high-speed cruising. It's much more fun when you have someone to chase. I didn't have much luck getting anyone to follow me into the bowls or down bump runs, much less into the trees. Not too many of our group were interested in catching the first lift in the morning either. Except for the day spent snowboarding when I quit at 3:30 due to sore feet I skied until they shut the lifts each day at 4:00. On our last day, I was in line when they opened the lifts and skied non-stop (except for 2 quick bathroom breaks) until after 4. I haven't found statistics on how much vertical each lift serviced but a rough guess says I covered close to 62,000 vertical feet that day. Lots of high-speed quads at Sun Valley. :)

I did see some local wildlife around our condos. There were a couple of red foxes that hung around there including one that came right up to our living room window. One night I was walking down the trail leading to our condos when I saw a dark shape about 50 yards in front of me. My first thought was, "Damn, that's one big dog!" As my eyes adjusted to the poor light I could tell that it's shoulders were about my height so I figured it was an elk. I clapped my hands a few times to let it know I was there and it started to walk towards me. I started backing up and it started walking faster. I then turned around and slowly jogged away to let it know I was leaving and it seemed satisfied and left me alone. I found out the next day from the condo owner that there was a momma moose and her calf in the area. Had I not been paying attention and kept walking down the trail it probably would have trampled me. Not the way I want to go. :)

This Saturday we leave for Sugarloaf, Maine for a week. Should be interesting.

Think SNOW!!!

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