Could it be? Did I pull my skis out of my truck for the last time this season? Dude, it’s the middle of April, and it hardly snowed this year. The winter that barely started is coming to a definite close. Some areas have been closed a month already, the last few will be closing after next weekend.
My brother and I sent the season out packing with a bang though. I picked him up at the Seattle airport Thursday morning, and we drove up into British Columbia. It seems the closest place to the border (Apex) closed already, and none of the others do night skiing anymore. We made it to SilverStar by about 4:30pm, then turned back to town where we stayed at a Super-8. I bought a medium pizza at Little Caesars for $5 Canadian (came to about USD$4.38), and my brother got a 6pk of some frenchie beer for dinner. Flipping through the channels, I made sure to stop on MuchMusic for a few minutes (even though it was some random rap video), to spite Justin.
Awake at 7:30am I jump in the shower, grab by continental breakfast (read: toast… no fruit, no cereal, no waffles, just toast and juice or coffee), and we’re on our way back to SilverStar. Snow conditions were very icy, but I enjoyed myself, as I’m from Minnesota, and grew up skiing on icy snow. Things loosened up a bit, after finding a patch of powder for a run or 2, we decide to head to Big White at about 11:30. We had “free” tickets to both these places (plus Apex and SunPeaks), but SilverStar and Big White are under the same management or something, so we only needed the one ticket for the day. We were driving in the clouds and snow for about half the drive up there, and the snow was excellent. We skied until close.
Then we figured we could either ski for maybe 2 hours at SunPeaks on Saturday (and risk my brother missing his flight if traffic was bad or something), or ski all day somewhere in Washington. We decided to take the full day of skiing. Neither of us really making a decision, we ended up at The Summit at Snoqualmie, and skied Alpental all morning (they have like 4 sections of ski area, Alpental is across the highway, has more advanced terrain, and had more snow, yay). Then around 2ish we drove around to Summit West and dodged the people and rocks for a couple runs.
We went to a bar in Seattle and each got a brew and some munchies before I dropped my brother off at the airport. Then I had to make the decision if I wanted to ski solo today. I did drive to Crystal Mountain, and slept for several hours in the parking lot, and decided about 4am that I would rather ski that place during a good snow year with better condititions.
So here I sit. At home. With people bugging me to blog more often.
My final count on the year: 20 days skiing, 11 ski resorts (Hoodoo, Willamette, AnthonyLakes, Bogus, Bachelor, Targhee (Cat ski), Tamarack, Meadows, SilverStar, BigWhite, Snoqualmie) in 4 states and 1 province (OR, ID, WA, WY, BC). Not bad for a shitty snow year. I’m trying to find my count from last year to compare, but this blog doesn’t go back that far. Stay tuned. [edit (9:23pm): Last year I only got 16 days of skiing at 6 ski areas in 4 states. I quote from my final skiing entry of last season, on April 1 2004: “Not too shabby considering my season pass was in a diffeent state, and I’m a college student without a lot of money.”] Also, it looks like I may be participating in the alpine leg of a Pole-Pedal-Paddle competition next month, I sure am looking forward to it if I am indeed competing.
Aside from all that skiing stuff, I’m pulling together a waterski club sport team this year at UO. Woohoo!!
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