Spring, Spring Go Away

After five years of complaining about winter I'm finally beginning to understand how Forrest feels when the outside temperature warms and the snow stops falling: It sucks. I'm not ready for ski season to end. While it's true I had a great time riding the sweet Arizona singletrack last week, I'm still bitter about missing the big storm and the subsequent deep powder that resulted in what many of my friends now refer to as the best days of the year (so far - I have hope the best is yet to come).

Anyway, when I returned home my legs were fried and all I wanted to do was eat, eat and eat some more. However, to make sure what little skill I've been able to develop on skis this year didn't disappear after a week of neglect I added a short detour to Brighton Tuesday on my way into work. The snow wasn't great so I only did five runs for a bit over 5,000 feet of vertical but I was relieved to discover that I still knew how to ski.

Today I rode Solitude with my brother, in town for a final warm-up before his trip to Alaska in March. Mostly we rode the groomers, spending the majority of our time doing laps on the Eagle Express lift. We came down Challenger more than any other run, but sampled most of what was available. Late in the day we made our way over to the Summit chair and did a run in Honeycomb, which surprised us with some fun snow off of the south side traverse. We quickly made our way back over (if you can call the Honeycomb Return -> Sunrise -> Summit trek quick...) and did another Honeycomb run before dropping back to the car and heading home to pick up my brother's son for their 6:10 flight home.

We ended the day with 22,700 feet of vertical, falling a bit short of our 25-30k goal, but pleased with how much fun the day turned out to be. Riding is just plain fun, whether it be on skis or a snowboard which is why I'm not ready to bid it farewell just yet. I'm sure my early season form on the bike will suffer because of it, but come cross season I should have some legs!