Early Season Skiing

So there are pleasures and joys of doing a bit of early season skiing.

The good side, it’s skiing. Plain and simple it’s great to get outside, breathe in the cold air, be in the mountains and get a couple of turns in. Why would anybody not like strapping two sticks to their feet and sliding down a mountian covered in snow. Also normally the mountain isn’t fully open so you can’t go throwing yourself down terrain that is steeper/gnarlier/stupider than you should be doing on your first couple days of the season. Yeah, so I’m getting old and don’t necessarily seek out self destruction these days. I limit my cliff hucking to under a certain size and am not afraid to claim chicken and back down from skiing something that just might kill me if I fall. (In my defense I’m a fairly decent skier and it takes a lot to make me think anything of that sort, but I digress…)

Now to the downside of ealy season turns. Let’s talk about snow coverage…it’s light, lighter if you are trying to find the first traces of powder and really shouldn’t be venturing off of anything that doesn’t resemble a groomed trail. I know, I know, groomers are for sissies and fluffy trails are better than unfluffy trails. This all makes sense and is quite logical till you head to your car and realize that in the process of finding fluff you were close enough to the ground, eg. rocks, to pick up  a wildflower in your boot buckle. (No this was not a staged photo. I’ve got independent confirmation if you want it.)