hard and fast and crowded

Still no new snow (we're trying not to get discouraged since this is very similar to what we went through last year around this time, but still ...) but that wasn't keeping us - or the vacation week crowds - away over the weekend.  We skied both days under blue skies and we rode the singles lines a lot too.

Riding the Supreme chair on Saturday

Saturday brought decent temperatures (in the low to mid 20s) and lots of clueless newbie skiers struggling to get on and off the lifts, skiing erratically and stopping in the middle of the trails.  No one crashed into us but I got cut off twice and forced onto the shoulder of the trail once.  As usual, we stayed at Supreme for the most part but we kept to the groomers or the ungroomed bumps at the edge of the groomers.  H tried a bumps run and reported back that the moguls were pretty hard on the knees.  The plus side to skiing groomers on my old Volkl skis is that I was skiing really well - H even said I was going fast (fast for me, anyway).

Hooray for down!

Sunday was much, much colder, starting at 11 F and not warming up much above 20 F all day, with wind chill around 0.  I wore my down vest under my shell and H tried out his new down coat; because we were sticking to the groomers and not working that hard, we were grateful for the extra warmth.  As we rode the Supreme chair, we could hear skiers trying to get out of Catherine's Area: the last pitch was scraped off and noisy.  It sounded terrible.

View from the Ballroom 

H went back up to Alta again on Monday, bringing his season-to-date ski days total to eighteen (I only have ten).  He got a good half day out of it, quitting before 2 p.m. when the Collins lift started to act up.  We really need snow.  The groomed trails have okay coverage but we're tired of skiing the groomed trails.  Hopefully we'll get hit with something big soon.