I have been out for a week with a sore knee, but decided that today was the day for the big comeback. I would not consider myself to be a fair weather rider, but this morning I looked at the snow cams and considered whether I should just stay at home, ice the knee and do Arabic homework, of if I should brave the conditions and head up. I decided that I have had so many beautiful days this winter, that it almost hasn't even felt like winter and that a good snowy day would remind me that we haven't even hit the best part of the season yet!
So, I threw on my snowpants and drove in the rain up to Park City to the Canyons. All season I had been itching to hit up Canis Lupis, the natural halfpipe, and that became my mission for the day. The Canyons have debuted many new features this year on their mountain including a whole new area on Iron Mountain and a heated chair that is covered. I have been laughing about this heated covered chair all season because the weather is always nice when I go up (lucky me!). But, today....oh today...I realized the benefit of the heated covered chair! Instead of heading to the gondola line (which I hate riding) I headed straight for the heated covered chair to try it out. By this point, it was snowing pretty hard with really big wet flakes. I had to laugh at how brilliant and yet how ridiculous this contraption is!!!
Pictured above: 1: From inside the covered heated chair looking out. The empty seat next to me was heated and the orange cover comes down almost to your feet.
Pictured above: 2: Me getting my face ready to go from inside my covered, heated chair. Very warm and dry in there!
Pictured above: 3: From my seat looking at the ones in front of me. Little orange heated pods.
I immediately headed for the farthest chair over, which was Super Condor and was disappointed to find that GNU had a tent set up and they were sessioning the pipe and had it roped off. I went to the bottom and decided to try it again and rode a little ways past them and then dropped into Canis Lupis farther down and it was great!! It's like a roller coaster, I loved it!
I stayed on that side of the mountain for a couple hours finding new fun tree runs and lots of untracked powder. Somewhere along the line I put on the Twilight soundtrack and just mellowed out. Normally I am rockin out to Marilyn Manson, Static X, 50, Sly Boogy and the other thuggish ruggish bones, but today I listened to the Twilight soundtrack, which included a beautiful version of Clair de Lune. I found two really, really beautiful runs. One was off of Eazy Street off of Super Condor. I had on my Clair de Lune and rode through the big snow covered trees, with no one else around. I did that a few times then headed over to Iron Mountain where I found the same type of run.... fresh powder, lonely trees, just me listening to Clair de Lune watching the snow fall so silently, but it was so beautiful. I hadn't anticipated having that kind of day- one that was so quiet, serene, beautiful and zen like. I enjoyed my day so much I couldn't stop. I had only planned on doing a few runs but just kept riding. I definitely plan on having more days like this... I really, really enjoyed it.
