Saturday May 27th, 2006

So alas, we all "awoke" saturday morning, and I use the "awoke" lightly because it was more that we all stubled out of our respective sleeping locations and eventually got all of our gear together. A split board had to be dealt with (damn snowboarders - always slowing up the process) skiis quickly adjusted, the subaru was loaded up and we took off on a grey morning to Jackson Hole ski area. After a quick bite to eat (for the boys - seriously, I don't think I can fit a fourth of the food they eat on an hourly basis in an entire day) we headed off to the tram. Unfortunately we missed the first tram (due to a large troop of asian tourists... oh my. i just realized something, i will have to prep myself for the asian tourists in NZ again... oh boy... if any of you knew me when I lived there before you know precisely what I am talking about). So, we had to wait around a little bit longer, but finally we were on the tram headed up to some glorious (ok maybe not January at Alpental, pass closing, 12-18 inches of NW freshies) but hey, its memorial day and i was going skiing. Who is this girl to complain!

After getting to the top, gearing up, we headed out of bounds. For those of you who might be a little confused the actual ski resort is "closed" to skiiers at this time. You have to head out of bounds to be able to actually ski. So off we took passing a few skiiers who claimed it was all a sheet off ice, this attempted to damper our spirits, but hell - that's pretty damn hard to do to me! So we kept on keepin on and eventually made it to the snow hill. Where we then had to sk down to the location where we then put on the skins and went back up. Now let me stop here for a moment because I am sure there are many of you are thinking, lil, that just seems a little bit ridiculous, you have driven a car, taken a tram, hiked, skiied, skiined and then you finally get to take some real runs?! And all I can say is, well, yea.

[Caption to this photo- I think Colin was frusterated with me ;-)]

It's a whole lot of work and sometimes the rewards are only two one minute runs before you have to put the skins back on and head back up and out of the bowl, but that is the joy of the "activities" I do. Sometimes it takes a lot of work ;-) but the natural high you can get from it is just oh so amazing.

After hiking up we "rested" for a few moments, had some goodies from our sponsors and right when we clicked into the skis, the sun came out and a beautiful run was had. Still waiting on some photos from that run because Alex was in charge that time through. And I promise the video footage is in the works! Anyways, we were all feelin' pretty good (I swear it has nothing to do with the help from our sponsor, my friend, JackD.) and we decided to hit that run again. Amazingly the boot up seemed to go even faster, can't ever imagine why! This time around we only stayed at the top briefly - just enough time to realize things were turning and our sun was very being chased away but some dark clouds and strong winds. After another few great turns, we headed back towards the Tram. Put our skins back on and headed out. However, quickly there was a bit bigger of a problem. No, a hot guy didn't ski by and I didn't run into a tree or fall down (I swear, I've never done that before - KT I can hear you roaring with laughter we are both sharing the same vision right now). The problem was the winds kept picking up. At first it seemed like it would blow over, but it didn't and before we all knew this 125lb girl was blown over, again, and again, and again. And it only got worse when I was hiking with my skis on my pack. We all got a little nervous, wondering whether or not the TRAM would be open, but apparently Karma was on our side and a whole bunch of tourists were stuck up in the lodge. We only had to wait around about 45 minutes before the winds had died down enough (they got up to about 75mph). Finally we made it back car, back to the condo, showered had some great mexican, watched x3, had a few beers, and was umm in bed by 1130pm. (Yikes, I'm exhausted just writing this. ha!) Ok, some of us were in bed by that point a certain pair of boys who are brothers had another mission and let's just say I think there was quite a bit of bad ice in some of those drinks.

One final quote from Saturday, "Don't you know who I am... I 'm the juggernaut bi+ch!!!"

wow. that turned into a long post and it took quite a while due to certain distractions. but as we all know, lil loves to be distracted. So alas, I sign out for now!!!