Brighton

Today was the longest ski day I ever had. It was a rainy day. I got up at 0700 and barely caught the 0730 bus to the Canyons. I got to the HR office just when it opened to get my pass to Brighton, then I chatted to other instructors while I waited around for the others to show up.

Tameca called me in and said I am clear to ski freely for the rest of the week; I just have to return my uniform. So I thanked her and rushed down to return all of that. Chris explained that Terrie, the girl in the office, came from some other departments and doesn’t understand that the season pass for ski school is not like health benefits. He said to me, “These people are skiers: they’re here to ski. That’s the only thing we give them!” To his understanding, if you leave on good terms the season pass should still be good for the whole season, so as far as he was concerned I could go home and come back in late spring to ski if I wanted. Gabriella, the photographer, was in the same boat as me: she leaves just when I do and they canceled her pass but she must not have argued hard enough, so she couldn't ski today. The new photographer, Jordan, did snowboard with us today.

The Argentineans took a while to get together and we also had to wait for a few others like Leandro (Chile), Damien (Australia), Desty (Holland), and David (USA, and known as Peter Parker because he looks like the guy who plays Spiderman), but nearly everyone spoke Spanish so I didn’t understand much that was spoken. We didn’t actually get up a chairlift until about 1130. We put all the gear in the bed of Humberto’s truck and also took Peter Parker’s van, which I rode in. On the way there we listened to the music of Manu Chou from Jordan’s iPod. There were many of us and only four seats in the van, so two guys sat comfortably on the floor in the back, along with a hitchhiker we picked up near Brighton. We met a couple of Humberto’s friends there so altogether there were about a dozen of us skiing in a big horde. I get tired much faster when I ski alone because I ski harder and don’t stop all the time to wait for others. The snowboarders never wait for skiers at the top of a lift, because they know we can usually go faster and always have to wait for them to strap up.

Humberto said he skied in Brighton for three full seasons and knew it like the back of his hand, so he took responsibility as “coach” for the group: he led the way and stopped often to count us. For the first run there were 5 skiers and 5 snowboarders, and Desty took a different first run on her snowboard because the out-of-bounds off-piste zone we did was too challenging for her. We did one run through the park there because Damien was unhappy about traversing so much through the off-piste, but I didn’t like the park they have there: the flat tops of the jumps are too long so we landed on them (with a painful shock through the legs) whenever we jumped without a lot of speed. For most of the day we skied through lots of fun tree gullies and chutes. Brighton is much smaller than The Canyons but the gullies are much better, with many rocky outcroppings we could jump off of. I had to have guts today! As always I really enjoyed the off-piste style of tree runs and many of them were steep and challenging.

The snow was thick, but very heavy, wet, and STICKY! It felt like going through quicksand; none of us had the right warm wax on and everyone complained of the glue-like consistency of the snow that held us tight between the trees. It was snowing at Brighton when we got there, not raining, but the snow shower only lasted a few minutes and didn’t leave a new layer. It was good snow for packing and most times we stopped we would throw snowballs at each other until everyone arrived. I caught my tips a couple of times today and fell, usually when I was trying to make quick stops to avoid hitting someone in front of me in a tight trail, and twisted my feet until a binding popped me out. I had one strange fall: while going fast down a piste, I ducked out into some trees and when I came back in my ski snagged on something, like a tree root or a snare trap. Whatever it was I caught my ski and sent me flying back onto the piste on my back. My skis stayed on but one pole fell off, and I hit my head on the snow so my goggles flew off. I got up right away.

Desty fell on a flat road and hit her ribs with her wrist guard. She refused to get it checked at the ski patrol there, but needed a rest so we went to lunch then. For lunch we had oversized sandwiches that we had bought at the supermarket on the way. I had a bottle of fruit juice “superfood” and an unreasonably large roast beef sandwich: half of a huge loaf of bread stuffed with loads of roast beef, a couple slices of cheese, and maybe one leaf of lettuce. I ate all of it. Some of the others also bought a gallon of Gatorade that they shared around, and potato chips.

Some people took a break but a few of us skied up to Milly Bowl which is a high bowl with steep drops and a series of many outcroppings to jump down, and then we collected the others so we could all try that and things like it for the afternoon. Humberto wanted to traverse and hike up to where we could go into some backcountry skiing, but we always had some wimps who couldn’t keep far enough up the side of the hill for long enough, and we ended up going down the same ways many times.

Brighton has night skiing on one of its lifts, so when our passes ran out in the afternoon we all went to pay the $7 difference between our day passes and a “superday” pass that lets us ski until they close the resort at 2100. Of course the only things that are lit up are a few groomed trails and the parks. A few people wanted to waste time in the parks and the half-pipe but we also kept trying the tree runs until after sunset, when it was impossible to see in there anymore. By then my legs were tired. However, in the dark we could only do the groomers and carving down those was actually restful for me. With nightfall it got colder and the snow became harder. It wasn’t so sticky but would hurt more to land on it from jumps. My last remaining pair of goggles are too dark, and I could only see pools of light where the floodlights were, not much between them. I knew where everything was and handled it all right, but once a patch of moguls caught me by surprise in the flat lighting. There was one run with moguls that the skiers enjoyed because it’s easy for us, but most of the snowboarders carved down very well too. The whole group was skilled so it was nice to just goof around with them all day and much of the night.

At some point we went inside for a hot chocolate break. Half of us took an extra couple of runs before joining them, but eventually I needed to warm up my fingers because people kept calling me on the phone - and at 1900 I could say “I’m still skiing.” After Humberto and Desty went in for a break by themselves, the group all sort of fell apart because everyone individually peeled off to take breaks or went back out. We ended up skiing in smaller groups of twos and threes for the rest of the night.

We stopped skiing around 2030, but had to wait until everyone got down to figure out how we would load the vehicles. We left the resort at 2100 but I didn’t get home until an hour later, because we needed to drop someone off at the airport first. I took a bath in the whirlpool tub and only then microwaved yesterday’s leftovers for dinner.