year of quantity

Lot of various turns in the past few weeks. Have probably skied 4-5 days/week the past few weeks. If time on skis and number of turns can make you a better skier, then I certainly must be getting better this season. In the past week, I've had a pretty good-snow night session at Liberty with the Single Plank Outlaw and crew, also ran into Lee & Scotty Jones; a hard ice night on Thursday with Oliver; a harder icier session Friday evening at Whitetail with Tony (who missed the Tuesday), some Outlaws, and Mr. Quigley. Didn't ski much with any of the Outlaws though as we all had trouble with our timing and catching up with each other. Found Tony and Joel in time for the chilly tailgate afterward though. After that session, I have to think I've improved my fall line ice turning ability significantly this week. Learning how to push that controlled sideslip in the middle of each turn a little bit more.

Saturday was a pretty good snow day at Liberty with Oliver, and yesterday was a completely different situation. Warm, 50 degrees, slow and soft. Ran into Tim on my second run, and skied the rest of the time with him and occasionally some of his buddies. Hit the moguls on Exhibition, and skied them better than I ever have. They were slow, really slow and sticky. So much so that we found ourselves actually steering towards the shiny spots just to pick up a little speed. Actually trying to go faster through moguls! Yea, that's never happened to me before. OK, so they weren't fully grown moguls, they were only a day or two old after having been groomed out after the recent ice storm. Still, I'll take slow & sticky Exhibition and Bold over fast & sketchy Exhibition and Bold any day. It added some work to recover from the constant pitching forward. We moved around, hitting the terrain park lift for several runs, Tim and Patroller Jay encouraging me to drop it a little faster so I can clear that gap and not smack the flat landing. Then over to Fanciful seeking the shady fast line near the trees.

Lots of options out there this weekend. Some folks were getting some quality, and others were doing some good works. Others hit Laurel Mountain for some fresh poached eggs, and I think a few others camped out at White Grass. Other friends rode in timed circles on frozen farmland. I selfishly went for more and more turns on snow. More turns equals more better, right? Time on snow adds up right? I'm certainly gettin' my $ worth out of the season pass.

And this past week, got better on steep boilerplate, soft baby moguls, and gap jumps. Fur sur.

Bike meeting tonight in Emmitsburg, maybe some new trail to build in the near future...