Reading: Edward Eager, The Time Garden

Viewing: Snow. Mountains. The usual boring stuff.

Moving: Skied 12,500 vertical feet. That's not just two miles. That's an awful lot of zigzagging traverse to drop a proportionate number of vertical feet. Plus you have to count that while a good skier works with gravity, I fight it every inch of the way.

Learning: how to adjust my boots.

 

 

 

30 January 2000: Skiing

We had the best day skiing Sunday. Easily my best day ever, our best day skiing together, an all-round great day with the exception of the drive home.

cereal raiderI wanted to go to Breckenridge, since I'd never skied there but liked the town, and thither we hied ourselves at 6:45 in the morning. We rose at an unspeakable hour and had breakfast, a detail I mention to explain why I'm wasting away to skin and bones.

On the drive up I didn't see any elk but I did see one huge bighorn ram, ambling alone just above the highway, and then around a curve, much higher, I saw a mixed flock. Next time I'll get photographs of the sheep and not just a mountain here and there.pyramid

We crossed Loveland Pass in the same lovely early morning light as the last trip, skipped Keystone and crossed Swan Mountain to Breckenridge.

Breckenridge from Swan Mt.Breckenridge feels like a good town to me. Keystone feels like a resort, Vail feels faux, Aspen feels expensive, there's nothing at Arapahoe Basin and that's how we like it, and Winter Park is just kind of a town happening to have a ski mountain on one side (which is just how they like it). Breckenridge is organic and real, like Aspen except affordable. So I was glad to be there.

We suited up and I got my boots on without gnashing my teeth. My mistake last time was trying to put them on while seated. That doesn't work. I need all my considerable poundage to shove my wide foot through an aperture designed to grip a slender ankle snugly. It was butt-clenchingly cold in the parking lot and I seriously considered three layers on my legs, poly long underwear and fleece pants and ski pants. My ski pants are tight enough with just one layer underneath, and I figured I'd warm up once I started.

Hair: tight inverted braid, started not from an ear-to-ear part but from a triangle right over my forehead. Forehead and ears: covered by a turtlefur headband (humanely gathered from shearing organic turtles). Torso: boobsmasher, poly underwear, cotton turtleneck, six-year-old L.L. Bean ski jacket (very low tech). Poly undies and bibbed ski pants. Ski socks on the toes, plus boots. RDC thought I might be more comfortable with just poly liners on my feet instead of ski socks; he said that's what experts wear. I looked at him: like I'm an expert. Besides, I continued orally, "Experts are freaks."

Walking from the lot to the base helped my feet adjust to their feet, and after some water and a pee we got on the lift. As usual I wanted my first run of the day to be green, and it was, a short one. Pausing, RDC asked me if I was having a good time or if I was just tolerating it. I gave him my "I'm being a good sport" smile. My feet hurt a lot but they weren't agonizing, so I could go on.

RDC was already hungry, so our next lift took us to the Peak 9 restaurant. I drank copiously from the water fountain, peed, and decided I could eat as well. I vacillated between chicken and vegetable soup (which would have been the better skiing food) and the blueberry muffin I really wanted. The soup nazi asked what was wrong and I told him I debating between what I wanted and what I should have, and he said you should always go for what you want. What the hell, I was already skiing on trout water. I got the muffin and a banana and a pint of Tropicana Pure Premium Orange Juice with Lots of Pulp and a liter of Glacier Blue Gatorade. RDC was putting away a cheese and egg croissant, bleah. Two things happened at the restaurant: I got plenty of liquids, potassium, and electrolytes, and RDC adjusted my boots.

I thought they might fit better now, but my feet were, of course, numb, so I wasn't sure until blood could circulate in them. (Speaking of which, why why why are the bathrooms in any lodge always down a flight of stairs?) Once blood got in there, yes, the boots felt better. And I began to have a great day. My feet didn't hurt--only were uncomfortable, which is the price you pay. My shins didn't hurt much, and my calves weren't being bitten through the middle. I have fat, semi-muscular legs; if I could tone the muscle or lose the fat I'm sure boots'd fit me better.

We skied steadily from then (10:30) to 2:45, which for me is a record. No, we took one other pee-and-water break. I skied happily and I skied well (for me), on blues all day. I didn't drop my butt except at the very end of the day. I even wanted to go on an ungroomed blue run, Briar Rose, still churned into mogul seeds from the day before. They weren't really moguls, the packed, spaced lumps of snow that form when good skiers ski their very tight S-curves down a slope all day, but nor was it the groomed, combed, Zamboni'd, styrofoam result of snowcat grooming. RDC was really pleased I was being adventurous, but being adventurous doesn't make you better. On several of the runs I traversed nearly horizontally across the slope to minimize the steepness, and that's what I tried to do here. But this run was steep enough that I hesitated to point downhill even for the moments it would take me to turn. Three of my turns I conducted on my tail: ski to the edge of the trees, sit, flip skis over, stand facing the slope, proceed.

I was having a great time. My knees didn't hurt. There was blood in my feet. The weather, of course, didn't suck. Conditions like this, RDC claimed, exist only in travel magazines and commercials. Exercise and sun warmed me up plenty, and I unzipped my jacket. I told RDC, skiing along in his high-tech 300-weight fleece parka and Gore-Tex shell, that I was opening my vent. (Both components of his layering system have zips in the pits, which is a more logical place to cool off from than the chest, but he deserves to be teased for calling anything a layering system instead of a jacket or coat or two jackets or even "a parka and a shell.") As we unloaded from one lift ride and turned to head down again, I raised one pole in the air and exclaimed, "To infinity and beyond!" I was pleased that RDC remembered who I was quoting, despite his having seen "Toy Story" only once four years ago.

And, dread to say it, but rollerblading has helped my skiing. The longest blue in Breckenridge looked like Columbine over on Peak 8, so off we went in pursuit. What we couldn't tell from the trail map was that where Columbine serves as an access trail for runs of all colors, it's mostly traverse. About two-thirds of the trail isn't steep enough to ski. Skis are as long as my body, considerably longer than blades only as long as my feet, but I could skate along on my skis. RDC, who spent several of his formative years in Florida, has never ice-skated, even on fake ice, and cannot move on his skis like that. That movement is the one thing skiing, ice-skating, and rollerblading have in common.

I understand in theory how you can slow down on blades the way you slow down on skis, but sidewalk is much less welcoming of mistakes than snow. I cannot do the hockey stop on skis or skates that I think real bladers can do. And I can't use the actual brake on the blade, as I've proven to my hurt. (But Jenn knows how! Maybe she'll show me!)

So we skied. And then we ate. In between was the usual bliss of changing. Off with the boots, off with sweaty layers, on with the dry fleecy pants and turtleneck and no bra, and the security of hiking boots. I made RDC admire and sympathize with the scars in my flesh the boots and seams from my clothing had left.

In the Breckenridge Brewery (unimaginative of us, but close and dependable), we walked into a steam bath. The restaurant faces the slopes and west, so the sun was powerful, plus there were the ten-foot tun brewery thingies. Whatever a tun is, there were five of them. Steamy. I took off my boots and socks and was prepared to duke it out with any state health inspector who gave me grief. I had to pee again, what a surprise--I'd asked the server to leave the pitcher of ice water on the table--and slid my feet into their boots. The bathroom, in the back corner of the brewery, away from the sun and steam, froze my keister off, I reported to RDC when I returned to the table. "You didn't have to tell me that," he told me, nodding at my chest. "Everyone can see that for themselves."

Then we drove home, leaving at 3:45, when approximately everyone else was leaving too. It was RDC's theory that everyone would be watching the Superbowl and the roads would be relatively emptier, despite my input that no one in Denver cared about the game this year. It was further RDC's theory that we were leaving before most people left. This was the longest day we had so far, because I usually wimp out long before, so I just kept my trap shut there.

But there was an accident at milemarker 233 or so, which we found out at milemarker 225, after we'd been crawling along nearly since we came back over Loveland Pass. It took us half as long again to get home. Five hours driving for six hours skiing.

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Last modified 31 January 2000

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