[On the right: Me making tracks in powder. Photo courtesy of Sasha.] This is the third in a series of blog entries about cold and winter. (The other two are Onsen (温泉): the right way to do cold and Frozen in Tucson.) At the very most charitable, I'd call myself a beginning intermediate skier. A friend of mine, Sasha, whom I've known for about 3 years, is an elite skier and coach. With Sasha, I've run, biked, hiked (e.g. the Grand Canyon, see here), and swam but never before skied. The other day, I got the rare chance and good fortune to have her skiing with me and provide expert, one-on-one instruction and critique for most of a day. Needless to say, such opportunities don't come often, and I leapt at the chance. I must say, after her coaching, I truly don't remember how I managed to ski before. (Some might say what I did before hardly qualified to be called skiing anyway...) The location? Sunrise Park Resort owned by the White Mountain Apache Tribe. Nearly 4 hours drive from Tucson or Phoenix. Lift ticket just under $50. My equipment rental was $25. My 4 hour lesson? Priceless. It was a beautifully sunny day just below freezing with almost no wind, and an almost empty park the day after an arctic cold front had dumped lots of snow on this 9,200 ft (2800m base height) small resort. The highest of the three small peaks is at 11,100 ft (3400m). Seems like we had great conditions, I even managed my well-supervised first attempt at ungroomed (powder) in the picture above. On the approach road to Sunrise Park Resort (panorama taken with my Olympus E-P1):
Click here for the panorama. Things like leg extension to partially shift weight onto the uphill ski, feeling the effect from moving the center of mass, not to mention use of those previously-thought-useless appendages called arms and pole planting with only the wrist at leg extension time, are abstract concepts that have now been grounded in tactile feel. In other words, they have begun to have real import and meaning. From neither rhyme nor reason to a bit of both now... Late afternoon photo at 10,700' (3260m). It was a really clear day (picture taken with my iPhone 3G):
The obligatory souvenir picture:
I survived and had a great day of instruction. Thanks Sasha!
Many, many years ago, I was a total beginner (not that I'm particularly good now), I once went with some fellow students.
I remember being completely terrified of the steep trails and drop offs. I think it was my first time seeing anything really steep. Very much out of my depth. Obviously I survived. But it made a deep and lasting impression in my mind for decades.
I finally got to revist Stowe for a day. Unfortunately, I didn't pick the best of times. It had rained hard all day Saturday making conditions miserable. Just a few flakes on Sunday in northern Vermont. To make the most out of bad conditions, I ended up at Stowe.
Monday, the day of my visit, it was windy and really cold. A thermometer read 5F (-15C) inside the building at the top of the Gondola.
(A big contrast to the previous weekend when I had the lucky opportunity of visiting Okemo with two feet of snow.)
Back to Stowe, trails served by the Foreunner quad seemed rock hard and icy, and not much fun. So I only did Nosedive before retreating to the warmth and more pleasantly skiable terrain served by the Gondola.
As for the steep dropoff that had me quaking? I never found the spot.
Though since I'm sure my mind spent decades embellishing that memory, I could have skied right past it on Monday sans recall. (I didn't see anything really steep served by the Gondola.)
I'll close this entry with a few pictures of Nosedive on ice on Monday:
