The Solace of Open Slopes
On a whim, I took the day off on Wednesday to go skiing. It’s the last week of Spring skiing at most ski areas in washington, and we had just been getting snow in the mountains. After some hard thought, I decided life was too short to miss out on the favorable conditions and go to work to stare out the window at the snowcapped mountains.
I got out the door around 8:30 and up to Stevens Pass a bit after 10. I was surprised at how easy it was to drive up on a weekday morning. I rented some skis and was out on the slopes by 10:30. Now, I’ve never been skiing alone before for a full day. It was exhilarating though. The conditions were great, the sun was out, there was a fair amount of snow on the ground from the night before last and the mountain was virtually empty. Like I’ve recounted to everyone today that I’ve told about my outting, I got into an amazing rhythm… I would ski a run, be completely focused on what was in front of me, taking the run, get to the bottom, hop on the lift, totally zone out and think about whatever came to mind on the way up and reawaken when I saw the unloading point, only to repeat it as I traversed the mountain from front to back. I covered the entire area of Stevens, which isn’t that hard to do in a day, but I made a point of trying out all challenging slopes from any chair that offered one.
There were a couple amazing runs that I took where I traversed diagonally down the backside through trees and found some more or less light powder that were simply amazing. You could hear me yelling woohoo, and stopping only to exclaim, “This is awesome.”
The weather was such that I didn’t have to wear a cap so I ended up with a wonderful racoon sunburn around my goggles.