Having an injured ankle has made skiing an interesting exercise this year. In years gone by, I could bomb down the hill, confident that my legs were strong enough to push thru anything. This year, however, I have found myself working on my technique. Carving sweeping turns; trying to pick out lines ahead of where my skis happen to be at that moment; cruising around obstacles, instead of slamming into them. Today was a day where a little bit of technique paid off.

When we got to the hill this morning, it was apparent that it had been snowing most of the night. 4 new inches of fluff greeted us at the K1 base lodge, and it was still snowing. Promptly at 9:00 AM, we took the Superstar chair up to head over to Bear Mountain, figuring the visibility would be better at Bear. If we did not get the first run down Bear Paw, we got the second. No one was there. It was solid untracked powder. Not knee deep, mind you, but 3 to 4 inches of light fluff on top of a nicely groomed surface. Whoa! We did a couple of loops at Bear before anyone else arrived. We did not do Upper Wildfire today, as they were blowing snow there; but we did do the park on Lower Wildfire. I know we had first tracks there. Really great. Of course, all the while it is snowing hard, covering up anything we had skied before.

By around 10:00, things started to get chopped at Bear so we moved over to Needles. Cruise Control, Panic Button, Needles, Bittersweet, Skyelark, and High Road all had nice cover with a soft base perfect for carving turns.

By 11, Mary's legs had had enough. She headed in so I headed over to the Canyons. Snowing like crazy at the peak. In the Glades it was consistently ankle deep. A few places near the tree line on skiers right on East Glade it was mid calf to knee deep where the snow had blown in. East Falls and Cascade were very nice. Little snow bumps were forming because of all of the snow coming down from the sky. Many people were doing Double Dipper, but I passed as my ankle was letting me know about all the snow. By noontime, I took a quick run down Rime to Bunny Buster, and I was done.

While today was not one of those days were you needed powder ski's, all in all, it was an excellent day on the mountain.