I have vivid skiing dreams in the summer.
In these dreams I’ve usually undergone a series of trials (running out of gas, losing my skis, having the chairlift disappear into thin air) to get to the top of a pristine slope covered in a thick, fluffy comforter of new powder. Then just as I’m about to drop into my first turn I wake to the blazing summer sun burning in through the slats of the blinds. I quickly close my eyes and will myself back to sleep in hopes of actually getting to float through the field of fresh-fallen snow, but it never happens.
Sigh.
I often think of those July dreams this time of year; a reminder that I should get up and get in some turns while I still can. It’s been a glorious April on the slopes of Colorado, quenching skiers thirst for snow that was with us again this season. Sure, this year we had much better snowfall than last, but we always want more. And this April we got more, so much more that I’m having a really tough time putting the skis away.
I thought my last run was going to be a trip down Beaver Creek’s Screech Owl on an early April day. I was with my 8 year-old daughter on the historic occasion of her first ever black run (well it was her second as we had gone down a short black minutes before). She not only made it down the run she skied right on past me because she had found a good rhythm in the moguls. So that was a good run to end the season on, it was such a memory of a moment that I could end my whole life on it actually–but that night it snowed.
So the next morning I got up early and skied myself silly and left Beaver Creek ready to let go of the season.
But then it really started dumping.
So in mid-April I drove up to the Jane for one last fix. It had snowed more than a foot that week and I found pillows and lines of powder all over the mountain. There was also an abundance of less fun coverage I like to call “sheetrock snow,” the powder with a windblown top layer that breaks off in big flat pieces of a similar texture to the walls of a house (and only slightly less dense). I was on the 7th chair up at 8:30 and caught the second to last chair up Challenger at 3:57 p.m. I just can’t resist a seat on a chairlift.
I went home completely spent and content…until I got up the next morning and heard that nearly a foot had fallen at the Jane since I pulled out of the muddy parking lot.
Maybe just one more time. One more time before the only place I can ski is in my dreams.
chrysscada 