Windham ski trip
Our department organizes a ski trip every year in February that is usually a lot of fun. This year was no different. The only non-fun part was getting up at 4 AM to get to the bus by 5 AM. The mountain is a little small, but it has a good variety of trails. It's also an ego-boosting trip for me because the difficulty ratings are extremely overblown. For instance, in Colorado, I usually ski blue-square runs most of the time, and venture onto the black-diamonds when I want a challenge. Double-blacks I tend to stay away from. Contrast this with Windham, where the second run I took was a double-black-diamond and it was not a problem. I could ski that all day. Contrast that with Jackson Hole, Wyoming where a blue run is pretty tough even when groomed, and black diamonds kick my ass, but I make it through. Thank goodness they use the blue-black classification as well, and I like those a lot, especially in the glades.
I had to wait in some nasty lift lines yesterday. I've never really had that be a problem anywhere else I've skiied(except for waiting on the tram at Jackson). It wasn't the end of the world, but waiting 10+ minutes every time you reached the bottom of the mountain really kinda ate up a lot of time during the day.
Only one person had an injury on the day. A kid came along who had never skiied before. He decided to try snowboarding, got to the top of the mountain, exited the lift, bent over to fasten his boot buckle and fell over, breaking his wrist. An hour later, he was in the lodge with a cast. Sidenote: he was being taught along with a 7 year old who had never skiied before by her uncle (the kids neighbor). He had to go to the hospital with the injured teenager, leaving the 7 year old alone at the mountaintop. The lift operator refused to allow her to ride the lift down. I didn't get the resolution of her issue, but she was back on teh bus at the end of the day so I know they at least didn't leave her up there for too long.
Today my legs are a little sore, but not as bad as I had expected. I should really hit the treadmill before March 14 so my ski pants fit a little more comfortably.
UPDATE -- Photos from my ski trip are finally up.