Mountain was my bitch

I totally pwned the mountain
(picture stolen from BlueMountain.ca)

Amazing day of skiing. I literally went down every run on the mountain! Ok, well, except for the bunny slopes, glades, terrain park, and Calamity Lane (the double black that alluded me last year, but was closed today probably due to lack of snow).

I hit the North side hard, fast, and often since I was there during the day and it is closed for night skiing (which is all we get on the usual Friday trips). Started off doing all the blues and single black diamonds to get warmed up and to remember how to ski. It was afterall, only my 5th time skiing, and my 4th time was the first ski & snowboard club trip, in which I was skiing in the rain and only on easy runs to humour Mimi.

Last year, I tried doing Calamity Lane, a double black diamond. It was really icy and after doing like one turn, one of my skis fell off and slid all the way down, leaving me to just roll down the hill. Not the best of my moments. I wouldn't have been able to do it anyways, I just wasn't ready for it.

I finally built up the courage to do my second ever attempt at a double black diamond and this time I killed it! I did like two slow turns to get out of the worst of the icy areas and to get the courage to ski properly, then I was like, ok, let's do this! I faced right down the slope (as opposed to sideways) and carved my way to victory! I later went on to do all the double blacks that the mountain had to offer.

The mountain was totally my bitch today.

My skiing actually improved significantly today after working on the single and double black diamonds. I'm skiing much faster with more confidence with nicer, tighter turns and more control. I wanted to try moguls, but "Mogul Alley" didn't have any moguls! And I wasn't stupid enough to try the moguls on the double blacks. The skis felt quite good. 155 cm skis. Gotta remember that.

My other accomplishment today was more properly doing cross country skiing. I was totally inspired after watching Chandra Crawford win gold in the cross country sprint for Canada!!! Waking up 2 hours early wasn't for naught afterall :). Watching her motor along as if her skis were rollerblades was awesome. My perception of cross country skiing was tainted by grade 8 winter camp where we were put in tracks and had to like double pole or akwardly single pole while in the tracks and not move anywhere. Skiing like they do in the sprints is so much more fun :). Chandra's my new Olympic hero. 22 years old. First Olympics and completely unproven. Announcers didn't give her a hope in hell. She killed the field. Smiling all the way. Amazing!