With it being Spring Break here, the Inn is absolutely full at present, so breakfast was quite crowded.
This was partly because the US clocks have gone forward onto Summer Time. So breakfast was moved from 8 o'clock to 8.30 for one morning only, so as to prevent very severe shocks people's systems. For some reason, everybody arrived together, so it was very busy for a while.
We didn't go out too early, because we though the slopes might still be very icy, but I still found them icy even at 11 am. The weather is very warm and sunny, and it melts the snow, which freezes overnight. Also the slopes are very crowded, which removes any loose powder and leaves you skiing on a hard crust into which I find it difficult to get my edges. I spent a lot of time skidding around on the hard crust and cursing.
Because there are so many people here for Spring Break, the queues were bad at the lifts - this was Beaver Run lift around 11.30.
Because of the crowds, there are frequent stops on the lift for people to fall getting off, or even to fall getting on. Our first lift stopped half a dozen times, and a woman fell off when trying to dismount from the chair in front of us. Usually, nobody is hurt in a fall of this type, it just stops the lift while the lift personnel run about picking people up. You have to remember to lie down if you are close to the chair when you fall, otherwise the chair hits you. This is a group of 4 people getting off the Quicksilver lift after me. It is a bit more crowded if the group is 6, as there is more opportunity for skis and sticks and boards to get muddled.
One of the lift men is standing by the central pillar, as the woman who fell off the chair in front of us, fell beside the pillar and had to lie back before the chair hit her as it went round.
We went higher up the hill, where the snow was slightly better and the slopes slightly less crowded. However, with it being a Sunday, there were plenty of people about.
As this slope is favoured by those who, like me, are not very good, it is often full of people trying to find the courage to move, those skiing out of control in wide snow ploughs (like the man near the trees on the right, who is doing the splits) and quite a few children. The child in the middle of the slope has fallen over and is refusing to get up, in spite of her mother's exhortations. I skied round her in the end.
I usually like this run, and the snow was good on the top part. But further down, a lot of runs merge as you approach Ten Mile Station.
You can probably see that five or six runs merge here to quite a narrow track leading towards the top of the lift, and that part of the track was quite icy, and full of people travelling quite fast.
We lunched at Ten Mile Station, which was busy, and skied a bit more, but the snow was gradually turning to slush in places so I decided I had had enough around 3 and we went back to the Inn. We needed to pack, because this was our last day there - they are full. We go back to the condo tomorrow.
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