Today was day 1 of Landers Spring Break and this was what we woke up to:
Yeah, it's snow, at our house. We immediately packed up the ski gear and headed to the mountain where it looked like this:
Does this look like spring to you? I think not, but I won't complain.
One word will sum it up: Epic. Lander took a ski lesson in the morning which left me free to wander the resort in search of untracked powder. Well, it wasn't hard to find. On my first 3 runs I was making freshies in knee deep pow pow. I then decided to check out Private Reserve and again, was in thigh deep powder that no one had skied. I ventured back up to the Star lift to see if there was any chance that Heather Canyon was going to open and ding, ding, I was a winner. I got there right as ski patrol was taking down the ropes. I have never had such luck, freshies all the way down Heather. Being that there were no lift lines, I made laps in Heather until Landers lesson was over and I was pooped.
Lander and I had a ridiculously expensive lunch at the lodge, but hey, it's spring break and we can splurge. It took some coaxing, but I was able talk Lander into taking a couple runs with me. Of course I had left the camera in the car, but the wind and snow was so bad that it would have been impossible to get any good pictures or video. His instructor had taken him in the trees a little and said that he was doing well controlling his speed and turning. We did some easy blue runs and an easy tree run. Lander kept saying he wanted to ski something steep, he is his mother's son. There was an easier black diamond right by the lift so I took him down it and did awesome. He picked his way down and even passed a girl learning to snowboard. He was so excited that he wanted to go again.
On the next run I decided to take him into Two Bowl, another black diamond. This is one of my favorite places to ski. The snow is always good as its East facing aspect allows it to wind-load so every run has good snow. I didn't know how Lander would do in such steep and deep terrain. He had a blast. It was so fun to watch him. The snow was up to his little thighs and he would lean so far back on his skis that he would drag his butt in the snow. He did really well on his first excursion into powder. When the slope mellowed out Lander found some untracked snow that no one had skied in. He floated through it and started to giggle as he felt his skis floating in the snow. That to me is what it is all about. Watching Lander discover the sensation of floating through powder and sharing it with him was by far the most awesome thing I have ever done. It pretty much beats any day of great skiing I have ever had. Now all Lander talks about is skiing in the black diamonds in the "shaggy, powdery snow". Sounds good to me, when can we go next? Oh yeah, Monday!
Lander listening intently. Notice the carrot from lunch in his goggle strap? All the kids had them, he eventually ate his on the lift when he got hungry.
