From getting up around noon every day to waking up before 0700 was not an easy transition. I didn’t get out of bed until almost 0730. I barely grabbed half a bowl of cereal before going to catch the 0800 bus. That actually worked out pretty well for me because I was assigned to Ski Utah today, and only needed to be there by 0930. Of course, I had to go up the hill to retrieve my uniform that I’d left in the rough a week ago. Thankfully, it was still there.
Many of the kids we had today had actually skied several times before, and I was careful to select from a group of those. I picked out eight, but two of them didn’t have poles and fumbled with their skis. I sent one away when I discovered he’d only skied one or two years. Another named Micheal said he’d skied about four years but his teacher informed me he had a heart condition, and he was consequently not athletic and much slower than the group. He was also kind of nervous. On High Meadow when they all impatiently tried to pass me in fast, poorly-balanced parallels, he put on a wide power-plow and slowly lagged behind. On another run down there I met another instructor in the exact same situation, and he said he was going to Sweet Pea to find someone with a lower class to move his weak girl to. When I got there I had to wrangle with Don, the guy in charge of running Ski Utah, to let me leave Michael with a much lower group. However, he was the one who came up with the team name on the gondola ride up. I believe they decided to call themselves “the Psycho Shredders.”
For more than the second hour, I had only the six kids with poles who could ski a good parallel (once I got them to take it more seriously.) It was a blast: it was cold and snowing constantly all day, so the blue runs were in fantastic condition. I’m told it rained last week and only recently began to snow again for a fresh coat. Within an hour we cruised down Snowdancer, and Kokopelli twice and I took them to some minor off-piste where a few enjoyed facefuls of fresh powder. I was looking for jumps, but many of them were powdered over now. On the last run we went down Tunnel of Fun, a black natural half-pipe, but I didn’t let them go down that on the run before, although I wanted to: they kept scooting down the hill when I helped one kid up, so I told them they had to be better about sticking together in a group first. I wanted to keep skiing until I had to bring them back but it was cold, and they wanted to go into Red Pine Lodge and buy some sweets, so I let them do that about when everyone started freezing, and their teachers found us there and took them back a few minutes early.
I did not have poles of course; I lost them the day before I left, when someone cleared up the sawhorses outside the rough and took them. Teaching without poles was no problem. When I was released I borrowed a pair of rental poles from the rough to free-ski with. Because it was cold and I may have actually gotten out of shape in one week, I didn’t think I’d have the endurance to keep it up for long. Because there was fresh snow on the ground, and the strong winds kept shifting it so every time you went down a run many of the tracks were covered, I just couldn’t stop skiing. The Canyons is big enough that when I free ski, I rarely ski any run more than twice in a day.
The Aspens were sweet and almost untracked. I didn’t get to The Pines today because I took another route back at the end. I only hit 9990 once. It was in a cloud and quite cold and windy, but the one run was worth it. I tried to find the places where I could get the snow up to my knee. I went up Daybreak lift for the first time and found the way down too much shorter than the lift up, because I basically ignored the runs and went straight down off-piste. From Dreamcatcher I took a run directly beneath the lift, where great fields of powder stay pretty well preserved. Then I tried the big jump twice, after avoiding trees coming down from Phantasm. The snow was still wet enough that it resists movement through it and slows you so I couldn’t get much air off the jump, and the landing was softer. I started to take Déjà vu but skimmed to the next run over, MacDonald’s Meadow, and I tried to ski several runs today with my borrowed poles held lengthwise in both hands. I believe that drill helps me improve my up-down leg movements and balance as I rely less on the poles. I returned through White Water. As mentioned, every run was nice with fresh snow still falling on it, but I still searched for the ones not many people skied.
Short Cut and Condor lifts were closed today due to high winds (and so was Golden Eagle but who cares?) so to get to the bottom I went from Saddleback chair through Echo to reach the Sun Peak area. From that lift I followed the idea of a couple of snowboarders into a forest called “Tree Time” right off the top of that lift. I jumped into the trees too high up and it was almost untracked, dense forest. I had to avoid many branches, and I kept gleefully saying, “Tree!” Eventually I followed a set of ski tracks, figuring whoever made them must have found a way out. I saw those two snowboarders came out of the same zone a little below me, and one of them picked up my ski when I crashed out in the natural halfpipe below it. That was a tricky run with the heavy powder in it: twice a ski ejected me and I found myself walking on one foot, and once I tripped in slow motion and fell on my face. This is of course part of the fun of powder. I did that tree run and half-pipe twice, and followed the green run from there to the bottom.
Back in the office I found that I'm scheduled for Ski Utah again tomorrow, so I'll have to go up and get my work jacket again. Terrie, the second-in-command of ski school bureaucracy, posted me a note to see her and it turned out she’d been keeping an envelope for me all week. In the envelope were $40 and a note: “Thanks a bunch!” It must have been a tip from my last teaching day a week ago, from the Indian fellow who wanted to tip me but didn’t have any cash on hand! So that was a very nice close to a very nice day.
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