Well, it has taken a good deal of organisation, but I am now staying here with Paul until he leaves, so I am here until March 21st. We have changed the date of my flight, and arranged accommodation for the extra month, partly here in the Inn and partly in the condo we had for the first 4 days. I only hope my body can stand up to the strain! I also hope Paul doesn't regret persuading me to stay, because he can't get a lot of entertainment out of the kind of skiing I am able to do.
It snowed heavily last night, so the snow was lovely this morning, and the day began with sun and blue skies. Being a Saturday though, everything was very crowded. We managed to get out earlier than usual, and caught the bus to Beaver Run on Peak 9 again, where we joined a truly enormous crowd waiting to get onto the Quicksilver lift. There must have been hundreds, but it's a 6 person chair, it moves fast, and the lift personnel were really efficient in forming people up into groups of 6 so there were no spare seats. So in the end, it only took around 10 minutes of queuing before we were in the chair and heading up the mountain. Weekends are always crowded as people from miles around come skiing for the weekend, especially when there is really good snow.
We headed right over to the right of the mountain, where the slopes are slightly steeper, heading towards the Peak 8 Superconnect chair. It was difficult at times, because the runs were so very crowded, with a mixture of very fast skiers and snow boarders, lots of beginners, and hoards of children. Children can be difficult to avoid because usually they pay no attention to what is happening around them, they just go. Paul found a little trail through some trees which allowed us to move even further to the right of the mountain.
I didn't find that bit of the run particularly easy because the snow was fresh powder, and my skis disappeared from sight, and I had to avoid the trees.
Anyway, I got down it eventually, and then we skied further down and caught the chair lift over to Peak 8.
It's a very long ride, so I was able to have a good rest before we got to Peak 8 and the Blue run which is somewhat steeper than the simple runs I have been doing so far. The US have a slightly different system of classifying runs than is used in Europe. The easy ones are Green, and the less easy are Blue. There is no Red, as there is in Europe; after Blue it's Black, which I have no intention of doing.
I managed to negotiate the top part of the steeper run, but by the time I got to the top of the next chair lift, my legs were aching and we had to sit on a rock and rest for a while.
You can probably see that the snow is fabulous, and the view is wonderful, but the run is a very long one, and I had already completed a steep part higher up. I skied down the remaining mile or so of the run, but my leg muscles were aching, and I was finding my parallel turns almost impossible. I was so relieved when I could see the end of the run, with the chair lift stations; I knew I'd be able to sit down and rest my legs.
By then it was lunch time, so I decided to call it a day, and we walked the relatively short distance to the Gondola, which took us back to the bus station.
This is the Gondola from the bottom, where we got off. It takes people to some intermediate stations before arriving at Peak 8, and is usually very crowded. It was reasonably crowded this lunch time, but my photograph is taken on the opposite side from the queue, so there is the view of the little cabins going up the hill towards the peak. The little cabins you can see are already full. The journey takes 12 minutes. You can probably also see the sun has gone in and the clouds are gathering.
We were able to get the bus back to the Inn - it isn't that far from the Gondola, but the hill up to it is very steep and my big heavy ski boots are hard to walk in - not to mention skis and poles being heavy to carry.
We arrived back for a late lunch, and Paul went straight off again to have some proper skiing on his own, while I relaxed in a chair, from which it is hard to arise because my leg muscles are so painful! I am certainly paying the price of no visits to the gym since August, when we started travelling.
By 2 in the afternoon, clouds had completely covered the sky so I think I had the best of the day. Paul came back about 5, completely wrecked, and thought he'd go to bed early, as he fell asleep in the chair.
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