IN THE DEEP

It was an exciting morning in the 'Boat today; we've been watching the snow pile on since yesterday afternoon until this morning thinking... ooooh, deeeeeep. I personally couldn't sleep past 6:30 from all the excitement.

We pressed glass at the Gondy, getting first chair once again thanks to some mule help from Rob W and Travis G with the gear! We didn't make it up before the Thunderhead pressers but Rudy's tracked out on a 24" day is dreamy just the same. We reached the Storm Peak line with over 100 other dedicated 'hounds and made about 12th chair up. Giggling and bubbling excitement aside, you don't get much happier than looking down from a Storm Peak chair and seeing Hurricane and Storm Face completely untracked and beckoning yours. We had to do it, and it was one of the top 10 best runs of my life. Long, steep, untracked, and thigh deep snow with intermittant face shots, seriously? Who's hatin' that? It was of course over Craig's head, so not him. We had shouts of encouragement from the lift the entire way down

Deep doesn't necessarily mean painless though... First run Rob snapped his pole in half (see right!). Laughing, we checked the lift shacks for replacements and made our way to Sideburn and Sunset and Lights Out so we could take Sundown up to check in the Patrol shack for one. Sideburn was as deep as you can ski it, folks, literally, choking on snow. Sunset was slightly tracked but up to my waste in spots, and Lights Out was bottomless. Unfortunately however Craig jumped his bouncing rabbit-like butt into a 2' hole and three of us, including a patroller, had to dig him out. But by the time we blazed through Lights Out to the lift, his leg was jumping now too.

For Craig this isn't good... bouncing legs means something in there is wrong- you paras know this, your body tells you when your nerves can't. Needless to say we had to exit the mountain to get him checked out. Alas, a glorious morning cut short but not wasted, for sure. TONS of pow. We made our way down the hill via Storm and our meadow (or I've also heard it called "Middleburns") to Rainbow for some final face shots.

Craig's at Dr Sisk's now getting it xrayed (I'll keep you posted, we're hoping for an ankle sprain), and then we head down to Denver this afternoon and fly out to Myrtle Beach tomorrow! We'll miss the holiday week of snow, so get after that powder for us and we'll see you next year!

Happy Holidays!