Sunday was a good day of skiing. I went to White Pass with two friends. I felt a little bad because I said I wanted to leave at 7:30 fully expecting that both of them wouldn’t be ready that early, but if I had said later, it wouldn’t have mattered. On the other hand, I was right; we didn’t get out until 8. When we were almost there we came across a bunch of birds that flew out of the way as we approached. If I hadn’t hit the brakes, though, a very large bird of prey (falcon, hawk, or eagle), would have become familiar with my windshield. We didn’t miss him by much; we could clearly see every detail of his body.
Once we got up there, Katie started on her snowboard while Ben and I went to the top on our skis. About an hour later, Katie called and switched to her skis. After that, we all skied together. The weather was great. It snowed in the morning, so we had some nice powder, and most of the runs were groomed. It wasn’t very fast skiing because of the powder, but it was still fun. I had fun going through the trees, too. And I intentionally attacked the jumps; weak at first, but more aggressively by the end. There was one fantastic spot where Ben had gone down first so he could watch. I went straight down a steeper hill to gain speed then hit a small rolling hill right after that and caught some great air, had a perfect landing and stopped right in front of Ben, scoring my best spray stop ever and covering him to the top of his hat in snow. He gave me a high five. By the end the jumps were taking their toll on me, and I still hadn’t figured out how to land right, so my toes were being thrust against the boot quite painfully. One of the toenails even turned purple, but it looks like it’s not going to take the nail off. It’s definitely darker than it was yesterday, but it’s not going to last long.
On our way home, we stopped for the traditional Miner Burger in Yakima, where the burgers are wider than a dollar bill (they’re huge!), so we gained back some of the calories we had spent skiing.
It was a good day, and I’m better at jumping now than I was at the beginning of the day, but I did have a few falls and some ungraceful landings and moguls.