Ski trip to Jack Frost / Big Boulder

Ski conditions on Friday turned out better than I expected. While warm, the slopes were not sheets of ice and had some amount of powder all day. Agnes, Kurt, Elaine, and I met at my house and left a little after 7 AM. The trip was short and we made it to Jack Frost around 8:40 AM. I brought music - Canadian folk comedy courtesy of the Arrogant Worms, a few random tracks (including "Cows with Guns" since it makes Agnes giggle), and Tatu. Tatu has become standard ski trip music since Kurt and I listened to it on our first trip in a blizzard.

A Philadelphia radio station was sponsoring the event so tickets were only $9.33. I'd heard about the trip at work and thought lots people would show up. There weren't many; I guess some people prefer to work on Friday. We did see two others Elaine's group, another guy that works in the same room I do, and a woman Agnes and I used to work with.

This would be the first time Agnes or I - or Khanh, who would show up later - would get to use our new equipment. It was also my first skiing of the year. We started out slow together on some green slopes. My skis seemed like they worked alright and that I probably wasn't going to kill myself, regardless of the unluckiness of Friday the 13th. Kurt and I split off to try some blue and black. I had one good fall. It was on a black trail, but on a gradually sloping easy portion. Kurt and I explored the trails slowly at first. We would slow down or stop at the steeper parts to judge how hard they would be. On the run I fell, we decided to zip down again without braking. Everything was going fine, I even maneuvered around the people stopped or cautiously picking their way down the hardest part without incident. When the trail leveled off I guess I stopped paying attention and my turns got sloppy. After looking back to see where Kurt was, I caught one of my skis badly and took a good roll. No major damage, just a shirt full of snow.

We met up at noon for lunch. Roger had just arrived and joined us. After some sandwiches we headed out together again. Agnes was getting used to her skis and she and Elaine had wound up on blue trails. We hit a green first and Roger split off to get used to his new (loaner) board. After a couple of trails together, including the same blue twice ith Agnes falling the first run but not te second, Kurt and I split off again and spent some time in the terrain park. We practiced jumping, which is a lot of fun. Based on the photo I need to work on my form in the air. Regardless, I was able to land and it is lots of fun. It feels like I am getting some good height / distance, but it also feels like I have professional form. Kurt did well and was working on tricks like 180° turns and grabbing his board in the air.

We all met up around 3PM and Khanh had arrived by then. We only had an hour until the slopes closed at Jack Frost so we got in a few more runs. Our lift tickets and Elaine's rental gear was also valid at Big Boulder. We headed there after 4PM to meet up with Kimmy. It grew dark really quickly. And foggy. It seemed like we had about 20 foot visibility on the roads and the slopes, probably because of Big Boulder lake. The trail conditions were better at Big Boulder, but I think the trails at Jack Frost were more challenging. We stayed together for a few runs, except Roger didn't seem to be coming up the lift and had already said he would split off early to go to New York. Kurt stayed with Khanh for a while to pass along snow boarding tips. Kimmy and I split off to try the black and blue trails. Kimmy was really good and I lost her in the mist on our first black trail. We rejoined at the bottom and rode a few more trails before we really got split up. Things were going fine until some kid who had no business being on black trails ran into me from behind. He was out of control and went over the back of my skis and clipped me. One of my skis popped off and I wiped out. He went down too, probably 30 feet away. He didn't even shout to ask if I was alright, but got up as soon as he could and took off. What if I had broken something or been knocked out? While I was relatively unharmed, he didn't know that. I had apparently smacked my hand on the ground. Whether because of the cold or hitting a nerve, I had no feeling in half of my hand. It came back slowly later and was intermittently painful. As the feeling came back there were bouts of the pins-and-needles feeling I get when my leg falls asleep. What pissed me off most though was the damage to one of my poles. This was my first day out on my new equipment and one of the poles was bent up. I managed to straighten it out enough to use it, but I was not happy. Maybe it was in that kid's best interest to flee the scene.

Roger had left, but the rest of us met up around 8 PM and finished up on some green trails. We left around 9PM, so I think I had my $9.33 worth of fun. We were starved by that point and were surprised the first restaurant we tried had already closed their kitchen. Admittedly I don't know anything about running a restaurant, but I think that, if I was stationed near a ski resort I would keep my kitchen open until at least 11 PM on a Friday night, given that the slopes close at 10 PM. We found another restaurant. They had also closed their kitchen but were willing to reopen it for the six of us. The trip home was interesting. The fog was not caused by the lake, it lasted the entire way back to my place. The limited visibility and exhaustion did not phase Khanh though, she blew by us on 476 and disappeared into the mist. Had it been warm enough to have the windows down, I'm sure we'd have heard the Doppler effect on the techno pumping from her stereo.

I can't wait until next Friday; we'll be playing hooky again to join Kimmy at her company ski trip to Blue Mountain.