Post "Blizzard" Skiing

Belleayre didn't get quite the blizzard the NJ, NY, Boston metropolitan areas got.  The storm hit harder to our south and east.  But it did get a great hit to send this ski season into high natural snow numbers.  The Belleayre web site claims the snow total this season to be at 43".

The "Powder Day" was Sunday.  Unfortunately we did not get on snow until about 10 AM.  That meant almost all the real powder fresh tracks were gone.  It is tough to get an entire family excited about getting to the mountain early on a day where there is no race program with an early start time.  This was a sleep late day, unfortunately coincidental with a day that we should have not caught an extra hour sleep time.  So, what we were left with was a lot of heavy powder that was crudded up.  It took a lot of work to ski at that point.  It was really killing my quads and leaving me out of breath.  It was fun and different, however, and not a liftline to be seen.  So the day was great, and it got even better as the crud got packed down into little fun bumps that you could air-turn down the mountain.  The place is almost 100% open now.  My daughter even hiked out to do Cathedral Brook twice!

Today was a day where the groomed runs were hero snow.  No bad turns to be had.  We did some skiing in the woods, which was difficult because you could not see the stuff underneath and the skis would go down there and hit sticks and logs.  I didn't like it.  The snow needs to settle a little bit before the woods are good at Belleayre, since they don't clean them out at all.  Today a log or something took my right ski off in the woods between Winnisook and Tongora.  When I fell my right knee struck a log or something under the snow and it hurt pretty good.  Still does a little.

And the lift lines are back.  Hadn't seen any since last year.  But snow in the lowlands brings out the less-frequent skiers.  They were not that bad, I must admit.  I only waited in a few for maybe a couple of minutes each time.

The weather remained windy, cold, overcast.  It would be nice to see a bluebird day!

I had some negative things today.  First, my son felt sick and only skied about half the morning.  He spent the afternoon in the lodge with his eyes closed by the fireplace.  Then, when we got back to the loft, his Xbox decided to do the Red Rings of Death thing.  Finally, I found out why I was having difficulty seeing the bumps well today: I did permanent damage to the reflective stuff on my Scott goggles, because I was cleaning them with my glove instead of a soft cloth, I guess.  I am going to try to send those back to Scott - you shouldn't be able to just rub off the reflective lens coating with your glove!