I haven’t posted in an age because of moving into the new apartment — and I’ve been skiing!

Today is our last day in Utah after a week (since Friday the 27th) of skiing at Snowbird. It’s a large, gorgeous mountain in Little Cottonwood Canyon outside of Salt Lake City, Utah. It’s civilized without pretension and really focused on the skiing, which makes it very ideal.

The sun came out long enough to throw a little shadowy contrast on the slope I've just skied down.

This week we’ve had repeated spring storms dumping inches upon inches of powder upon the mountains. There was only one day of sunshine — last Saturday — but all of the rest has been cloudy, windy, and snowy. It’s been good, generally, but tough good, challenging good, not the sort of sit-back-and-ski sort of snow. (But then again, if you wanted that kind of snow, you wouldn’t be in Utah, the place to be for tough, steep, powdery skiing.)

The first year I was here, 2007, was my first encounter with powder. I’d never seen snow on a mountain like it; the east coast’s snow tends to be icy, thin, and oftentimes machine-made. They don’t do any snow making here — they don’t have to. I’ve gone from being terrified of the greens (the easiest slopes) here in 2007 — greens in the west are equivalent of black diamonds in the east — to being able to do groomed blacks out here. My best days are sunny days on groomed trails of all sorts. When the sun is out I am a happy camper.

When the sky is blue and the sun is out, you can see all of the way to Salt Lake City from Little Cottonwood Canyon. It's my favorite skiing weather.

While I know how to ski in powder, I’m not thrilled about it, in general, unless I can actually see, as this week has made even more clear to me. When the visibility is such that the slope in front of me looks uniformly white — when a blurry, cloudy haze makes seeing the pitch of the slope and the quality of the snow upon it impossible — then it’s tough. The easiest way to fall or crash with powder is when you’re going from groomed to powder or powder to groomed, where that consistency changes, and most especially if it’s heavy powder. Powder slows you down, so if you catch one ski in powder and one on the groom you’ll probably go flipping, skidding, or spinning wildly. (The wildest falls we term a “yard sale” when every part of your gear — skis, poles, maybe goggles/hat if you were stupid enough to not wear a helmet — go flying all around.) So when there is bad visibility, it makes it hard and a little scary for even the expert experts.

The clouds here make the light flat, but it's not too bad for skiing. When it's snowing and/or very windy, the visibility is much worse.

When I can see what I’m skiing I can do a lot of things on this mountain, but when I can’t, I start having a panic attack and reverting to the oldest how-to-ski-a-steep-slope lessons (meaning, skiing as perpindicular to the slope as possible and making the turns very sharp), which isn’t a good idea. Especially in powder. Powder, as I know and I am consistently reminded, will provide resistance and slow you down, so you really don’t want to go horizontally or slow down too much, let alone stop, because you run the risk of being stuck up to your shins (or knees, or thighs as we were on Monday with 22″ of fresh powder) in snow the density of which can vary from feathers to thick snowman-making-snow. I don’t like skiing too fast unless I know I’m in complete control of my edges, and that requires (at this point in my skiing experience) a consistent snow surface. I haven’t had enough powder experience to gain that confidence, so I freak out in the thick stuff. Which made this morning — our 8th day of skiing and the morning of our departure — a really difficult morning.

This morning I made it down one long run (about 2,500 vertical feet) and gave up. I fell about 4 or 5 times, catching edges and being surprised as well as intentionally sitting down on the slope when I felt my balance waver. I wasn’t the only one falling either. Every new slope had at least one person foundering through the powder on butt or knees, even the experts who jump through the cliff zones (like Bryan) were falling. Falling once every 2,500 feet is usually my max; more than once and either I’ve had some bad luck or it’s time to go inside. (Like Thursday I fell twice in 2,500 feet, once was my own fault for catching an edge, once because an old man bashed into me and sent my skis flying — I hate when little kids or elderly skiers decide they can handle low light conditions and end up crashing into people.) When I fall too much, and it’s a result of my being sloppy or the stuff I’m doing is too challenging (aka too powdery), then it’s time to go inside. There are a bunch of “rules” we use when skiing, like when your legs are tired and you feel like maybe, maybe you have one run left… that usually means you don’t, and you’re wishfully hoping you do, so it’s time to go in. The last thing you want to be is cramping on the way down; when your muscles don’t react quickly or well you end up getting sloppy, which leads to crashes, high speed, or you risk hurting yourself.

I also tend to get panic attacks on the mountain. They overwhelm and surprise me. Bryan and I have developed a system for figuring out when a panic attack is me being stupid and over-thinking an easy slope or when I am done and it’s time to go in. I have a tendency to over-think everything, skiing included. Bryan and his family taught me sometimes I really do need to stop thinking and just throw myself face first down the mountain (really; you do want to face downhill, even lean downhill, while skiing) and do it. My technical skills are there, and I surprise myself when I discover they are there. Looking uphill at something horrifically steep that I’ve successfully completed is pretty exciting, too. (That’s where the visibility issue can come in; if it’s hard to see the whole vertical when you’re at the top, it’s hard to panic about it but rather approach the slope one turn at a time.) The biggest thing, usually, between me and any tough slope is my own head. Getting over that to the point where I’ll be comfortable on every slope will take time. Every year I do a bit more, challenge myself a bit more. I’ve no desire to throw myself off cliffs, but being able to tackle all of the trails on the mountain is something I’d like to see myself accomplish. In time.

This year we were exhausted early on a consistent basis. Where in years past we’ve stayed out from 9am to 4pm, the whole time the lifts are open, this year we came in at half days or sometime in the early afternoon, or we went out at 11am and came in sometime in the mid- to late afternoon. It’s hard to do a full day out here, though; when every slope is a challenge of powder or low light or when you consider one “run” can be 2,500 or 3,000 vertical feet… you get tired, exhausted, muscle sore, or winded after a few runs. And being from New York, the altitude is another hurdle you often don’t expect to knock you out, but it does hit you, especially if you’re exerting yourself. Seven days of that and it makes sense as to why we were exhausted this morning. It’s really time to get back to New York and reality, as much as we were trying to avoid thinking about it. But now it’s back to reality, and back to work.

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