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2008-12-20 01:01
in Nsnow, Snow
The start of this season was pretty horrible snow-wise, it's only this week that we finally got enough natural snow for resorts to be skiable. Of course, kirkwood beat everyone else by totally 4ft in just a few days. My initial plan was to go wednesday to get lost in the heaps of very fresh and dry powder, but I got sick for the 3rd time in a row the day before :(
Thankfully, this did not turn out too badly as my friend and coworker Johannes had planned to go the weekend and was able to take us. On one side, I did miss the heaps of dry powder, but on the other side the mountain was not that well covered off the main trails, and it was easy to ride often hidden rocks more or less everywhere, especially if you were into tree skiing, so I can only imagine how wednesday must have been a bit dicy and how it would have been easy to hit the bottom.
So, this weekend qualified as excellent early season conditions: nice powder (although not as dry and fluffy anymore) and enough of a base that we only somewhat damaged our boards as opposed to severely damage them :) (I took my rock board, so no biggie). I convinced my friend Johannes to stay at kirkwood (I found a one bedroom at kirkwood on VRBO for $320/night, or $107/head, which isn't cheap but was damn convenient :) (the owner gets credit for driving the keys over to us that same evening as we had only finalized our plans friday evening)
Saturday was actually a nice bluebird day while sunday was colder and snowy but allowed for more powder. Deep palisades was actually quite good already, although during the traverses there were some unavoidable quite rocky sections that I had to just jump or fall from as they were unridable.
The only downer was that I was riding my old rock board with step in boots and had left my brand new vans boots in the car, and they somehow got lost/stolen some time during the weekend. Grumble... On the plus side, Jennifer had a good time and made good use of the time off work and worries at home :)
the rocks were everywhere, often hidden right under the snow
Johannes was a fairly decent boarder and I didn't have to wait for him much :)
the chute skier's left from Corniche, still hard to ride down without scraping on rocks
we had snow/rain the entire way back
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