Early season

Ski season 2010-11 is off to a great start.  My first day was on November 28th at Discovery Ski Area, my home mountain.   The entire front side of the mountain was open and skied great.  There was about six inches of new snow on top of a nice little base.  I was telemarking, the most physically demanding of the three disciplines, and was whupped by the end of the day.  This was definitely the best November skiing I have had.

I started working for ski patrol the following Thursday and worked through the weekend.  We spent two days ski cutting. Ski cutting is a from of avalanche control that requires the skier to ski across the run from safe spot to safe spot trying to break through all the different layers of snow.  When we are done the run looks as if it were a sideways checkerboard.  By ski cutting we are trying to break up the layers of snow and create sections in the snow, so that if it does slide it only slides to the next ski cut and does not slide all of the way to the bottom.  There was more and better snow, not avalanche prone, on the backside than I have seen in the first week of December.  We were able to open most of the East Bowl for the weekend and it skied great, now I am up to 5 days.

The second week of December I worked for Ski Patrol Friday through the weekend.  We did more cutting and were able to open most of the west bowl for the weekend.  On Saturday, the backside skied like it was winter, light and fluffy.  On Sunday there was more new snow and it warmed up so the skiing was spring like, and very good. I also got a lesson in on Sunday, a request from a friend of ours,  she got a lot out of the lesson and was happy with the results, sweet.  It was the best skiing I have had for the second week of December.

This week we had some rain and then some snow, but the rain did not seem to hurt us, Phew.  Tuesday was the on hill refresher for ski patrol and the skiing was great.  We did some ski cutting on Wednesday, and it looks as if we will have all of the backside and the Granite side,(which is skiing great) open for the weekend.

Well, as of today I have ten days of skiing, one day on tele skis, one day on a snowboard, and eight days on alpine.  I have worked all but one of those days, but that is how it goes when you want to be a skier, without a real job, take work when it is there.  I hope the snow continues to fall and that Disco has a super deep year, even though I won't be here much longer.  I also hope the Alps get a bunch of snow that makes for a great ski season there, because, that is were I will be.