speden
Active member
- Joined
- Nov 18, 2008
- Messages
- 913
- Points
- 28
Conditions: low 30's, overcast, firm manmade
I was glad to finally get my season going at Pat's yesterday. Had a rough off season with a broken toe and then tore a wrist ligament about a month ago. I didn't want to ski and re-injure the wrist while it's still healing, but couldn't wait any longer. So I just put a wrap on the wrist and tried not to stress it.
First few runs were pretty shaky. I was trying to remember how to ski and also revise my turn technique to be more parallel and two footed. It didn't help that the snow wasn't groomed all that flat and had a fair amount of partially frozen chucks of heavy snow. But after a couple of hours I started to feel more comfortable. I just had a fresh tune on my skis and I think I need to de-tune the tips a little, since they felt kind of twitchy on the runouts.
After a break I switched over to some new boots (Tecnica Inferno 110's) that I bought for the season. They are so tight I didn't think I could stand more than a couple of runs with them, but I wanted to start breaking them in. But to my surprise I was able to do quite a few runs in them without losing the feeling in my toes, so maybe they won't need as much shell work as I expected. They are a bitch to get on, but man they are rock solid and the skis feel like they are part of my body. Huge upgrade over my old boots.
I tried to use "The Ride & Ski Card" which is supposedly good for $5 off at Pat's on the weekends, but they didn't honor it. They said the early season price is already discounted. I'm starting to think I wasted my money on this card since pretty much every day there's some kind of free discount without the card.
For the first time I saw someone fall off a lift chair. A mom and her son loaded up in the chair ahead of me and the kid dropped his poles. The lifty was reaching down to pick up the poles to give to me to carry up when I saw the kid slide off the chair. I guess he was trying to reach down to pick up his dropped poles and got too far forward. Luckily he was only about six feet in the air when he came off, but he landed pretty hard on his butt on some rocks. He seemed okay and they loaded him up with me. The mom kept looking back at us but was surprisingly calm.
Here are a few photos:
Pretty overcast most of the day, even though the forecast was for sun.
Wasn't too impressed with Pat's grooming for the early season. They didn't have all the trails ready to go at opening time, and the grooming was pretty coarse in many places with lots of dips and ruts. There didn't seem to be much corduroy, so it seemed like they were grooming things flat.
There was some sun in the distance, but it mostly stayed away from the hill.
Looks like they started to blow snow on Hurricane, but then bagged it for some reason.
Most of the crowd hung out in the park. Kids were lining up to hit each feature, and a lot of them looked rusty and were wiping out on their landings.
It got a little busier in the early afternoon, but the lifts were pretty much ski on all day.
I was glad to finally get my season going at Pat's yesterday. Had a rough off season with a broken toe and then tore a wrist ligament about a month ago. I didn't want to ski and re-injure the wrist while it's still healing, but couldn't wait any longer. So I just put a wrap on the wrist and tried not to stress it.
First few runs were pretty shaky. I was trying to remember how to ski and also revise my turn technique to be more parallel and two footed. It didn't help that the snow wasn't groomed all that flat and had a fair amount of partially frozen chucks of heavy snow. But after a couple of hours I started to feel more comfortable. I just had a fresh tune on my skis and I think I need to de-tune the tips a little, since they felt kind of twitchy on the runouts.
After a break I switched over to some new boots (Tecnica Inferno 110's) that I bought for the season. They are so tight I didn't think I could stand more than a couple of runs with them, but I wanted to start breaking them in. But to my surprise I was able to do quite a few runs in them without losing the feeling in my toes, so maybe they won't need as much shell work as I expected. They are a bitch to get on, but man they are rock solid and the skis feel like they are part of my body. Huge upgrade over my old boots.
I tried to use "The Ride & Ski Card" which is supposedly good for $5 off at Pat's on the weekends, but they didn't honor it. They said the early season price is already discounted. I'm starting to think I wasted my money on this card since pretty much every day there's some kind of free discount without the card.
For the first time I saw someone fall off a lift chair. A mom and her son loaded up in the chair ahead of me and the kid dropped his poles. The lifty was reaching down to pick up the poles to give to me to carry up when I saw the kid slide off the chair. I guess he was trying to reach down to pick up his dropped poles and got too far forward. Luckily he was only about six feet in the air when he came off, but he landed pretty hard on his butt on some rocks. He seemed okay and they loaded him up with me. The mom kept looking back at us but was surprisingly calm.
Here are a few photos:
Pretty overcast most of the day, even though the forecast was for sun.
Wasn't too impressed with Pat's grooming for the early season. They didn't have all the trails ready to go at opening time, and the grooming was pretty coarse in many places with lots of dips and ruts. There didn't seem to be much corduroy, so it seemed like they were grooming things flat.
There was some sun in the distance, but it mostly stayed away from the hill.
Looks like they started to blow snow on Hurricane, but then bagged it for some reason.
Most of the crowd hung out in the park. Kids were lining up to hit each feature, and a lot of them looked rusty and were wiping out on their landings.
It got a little busier in the early afternoon, but the lifts were pretty much ski on all day.
