less springy, no problem

Sunday's weather was very similar to Saturday: perhaps a touch cooler, definitely less breezy, still with the high, thin clouds that kept it from becoming a true bluebird day.  The crowds about the same and the snow conditions were the same too: frozen hard in the morning, sticky and sloppy in the afternoon.  In fact, it was set up so hard in the morning that we didn't even bother doing a run down Collins and instead went straight to Sugarloaf.  We found that it was still a little frozen there too, plus fairly busy since everyone was skiing there on the groomers.  We both thought that there were a few too many people skiing too fast for the crowded conditions, especially since you just can't stop on frozen snow like that - we were in defensive skiing mode for most of the morning.

It also seemed like everyone out on the hill was a tourist and almost everyone was a bar-putter-downer!  Pretty much any time we rode with other people, they put the bar down, whether they were an old guy from Connecticut, a father and daughter duo or a pair of North Carolina ski patrollers.  We were grateful that we were wearing helmets (we always wear our helmets) because we lost count of the number of times someone whacked us in the head while dropping the bar.

On the side of Sugarbowl

So, here's where I have to confess something.  We've been good about bringing our own lunches all year.  H brings a tupperware container of mashed potatoes and I pack a Snickers bar and some pretzels or nuts.  I keep the Snickers bars in the freezer at home (out of sight, out of temptation to snack on midweek) and in the winter, they stay frozen in the backpack through until lunch.  But Sunday I took advantage of the warm temperatures to leave my Snickers at home, saying it wouldn't stay frozen and would get smushed down there at the bottom of the pack, and instead bought Alf's french fries for my lunch.  Was it a lame excuse?  Yes, it was.  Were the fries tasty?  Yes, they were.

Although the air was warm, those high, thin clouds kept snow fairly firm until after lunch.  We stuck to the groomers even into the afternoon:  over on Supreme, Challenger had not been groomed from the day before and looked awful, all scraped off in between huge moguls.  The one time we did go off-piste, when we ducked into the trees below East Castle just to see how it was, neither of us could turn our skis in the heavy snow.  The sticky conditions took their toll and this time we cut out around 2 p.m., unwilling to risk straining our knees for a few extra runs.