i am such a dumb@$$

The report said Alta only got another eight inches, you see, and I figured that eight inches wouldn't be enough to fill in all the tracked-out places, so on Sunday morning when H asked which skis I wanted to take, I said my old Volkls, not trusting myself or the new skis.  As soon as we pulled into the parking lot and saw how light and fluffy the snow was - more winter snow than spring snow - I regretted my decision.  And as we rode the first lift up, over the smooth and trackless blanket of deep, fresh snow, I knew I'd been a complete doofus.

This is what happens when you don't wear your powder skis

There was WAY more than eight inches up there.  It was deeper than yesterday and the first time I fell in Catherine's Area (the first of very, very many times) because my poor little skis kept diving down and squirreling around, instead of floating up on top like my Rossignols would have done ... well, suffice it to say that the lesson was learned very quickly.  Despite my struggles, we did a lot of runs in Catherine's because it was so dang amazing.  Even H was getting stuck with the snow so deep.  I can't believe how much snow is up there: the storm total is 43 inches.

The snowbank at the top of Sugarloaf chair

When H had to bail out of the low traverse to Catherine's because the guy in front of him fell, we skied one of the chutes in Supreme Bowl, which we really hadn't much skied all year because it tends to get skied off so quickly.  Not today.  Ridiculous amounts of snow in there.  I ended up doing much better in the chutes and so we did a bunch of runs there both before and after lunch.  Just awesome: even though I was getting really tired, it was just so good that I didn't want to quit.

I did quit, finally, getting back to the base lodge around 3:00 p.m.  H stayed out for another hour, doing two runs off West Rustler and two off the Wildcat chair - both amazing.  We paused for a PBR in the lodge, this time cheersing to lessons learned (I will not be an idiot next time there's new snow and I will bring my powder skis) but also to yet another incredible and fun day in the canyon, dumbassery notwithstanding.