Neither of us slept very well and we got a slow start, missing the crappy breakfast at the motel and having a better one in our room. Leia showed saintly patience today waiting for me to eat and get ready.
There was an enormous line to buy lift tickets when we got to the gondola - fortunately we already had ours and the gondola line wasn't bad. We skied straight over to Sky Express by the California trail which was actually a pretty fun warmup in itself, then took Skyline trail back to get higher. I tried to teach Leia again to skate on the flats to go a little faster.
Leia and I split up at 11:30 at the scenic viewpoint on Skyline, and agreed to meet again at 1:00-1:30 at the East Peak Lodge for lunch. We did this because I wanted to traverse all the way across Milky Way Bowl to go down Killebrew Canyon, which apparently is not open every year... and the snowboarder we met yesterday said it took her two hours to ride down it and hike out of it at the end. It took me less than half an hour, about half of which was traversing and walking. Since I had so much time left, I ended up doing Mott Canyon twice (laps of about ten minutes) then found that I could take Dipper chair and traverse a lot to reach Killebrew a second time.
Killebrew Canyon was great, the best run here: it had lots of deep, soft, dry, fluffy powder and is hard enough to reach and ski that some of it was still left almost untouched a week after the last snowfall. There are cliffs, trees, and steep powder chutes that start a micro-avalanche every time you disturb the snow. This kind of run was challenging and a little scary, but really reminded me what I love about skiing in the first place. I felt like I could fully be who I am.
Mott Canyon was also steep and challenging, but I found it less fun because the lift makes it a lot easier to access and do laps on all day long, so some regions were tracked out. Still as an expert slope there was no line at that lift. My first time down Killebrew I hit the ski area boundary and had to walk back about 15 minutes - the second time I knew better and left it early to emerge right at the Mott lift.
At nearly 1:00 sharp, I made a navigation mistake and ended up having to wait in line at the slow Galaxy chair to reach Leia at the lodge, half an hour later. She was once again very patient with me after finishing her mocha. They were out of the pulled pork there today, so Leia had a big burger at lunch and it was too much for her.
We went on moguls that she went on by herself when we split up, and between the trees - Leia was not only brave but really enjoyed it. Skiing in the second half of the day was not coming as easily to both of us, since we were both pretty tired and experiencing some pain, but I was impressed with how well Leia was doing. The boots I had with me were my old ones, not the nice new ski boots I had bought in Andorra. Those were my 8 year old boots that were missing their insoles: they didn't fit very well and I only figured out today why my feet are in such pain.
After we got back to the motel, Leia lay fatigued in bed digesting her burger, and I went out to get a taco at the hole-in-the-wall next door.
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