Tochi's Hut

Went to Blue Mountain for skiing today with 2 coworkers. Weather forecasts predicted freezing rain and +5 C temperatures today, which scared most people away. This was the last chance the three of us had at skiing this season. At 7:30am, we decided to go-ahead with the trip. BM had a snowbase of 140cm, which should have been enough to take on the freezing rain.

The rain stopped by the time we got to Collingwood. However, there was a dense fog around the area. It was bad enough that we couldn't even see the top of blue "mountain" (aka hill). More on this later.

Blue Mountain totally upgraded their IT facilities from last year. For rentals, you walk to one of many computer terminals, and enter your personal info, weight, shoe size, height, etc. When you go up to collect your rental equipment, they just call up your information, and the computer has all the appropriate equipment and settings laid out for the staff. The overall process was very efficient, and I was out on the slopes with my equipment in 15 minutes.

We started off at Central Lodge, and took fast chairlift #2 up to the top. Halfway up the mountain, we entered the dense fog, which was eerily cool (unfortunately, I didn't take a picture. :(). Everything had a haze around it. The snow was very slushy and sticky, definitely sub-optimal conditions. With the fog, everything just looks like slush. We decided to head north over to chairlift #3 area, as it was less crowded in that area. The north area happened to be where all the black and double black trails were located.

As a first run of the day, we decided to take on a blue trail, just to wet our appetite. I stopped at the top of the hill, looked down (visibility maybe 10m). The slope didn't seem so bad. I started heading down, then felt huge bumps in the hill under my feet. Two seconds later, I realized I was on the moguls. Two more bumps later (you really can't make out any of the moguls), I flew off the top of one of the bumps, panicked, and fell face forward into the snow, lightly spraining my right thumb (racquet hand :-( ). Ironically, last time I went skiing, I had promised that I would go on the moguls on my next "ski trip". I didn't expect to try them on the 1st freaking run of the day. After getting back up, I made my way down the moguls very slowly. Almost fell a few more times. This first run really shook my nerves. Later on, we found out that the blue trail was called MOGUL ALLEY. When the sun came out and you can actually see the moguls, it's really amazing how I only manage to fall once going down that thing.

Rest of the morning, I did the rest of the northern trails, except for Elevator Shaft and the Expert moguls (I'm not going anywhere near moguls in the near future). I went down Spectacular (double black), came out of the steepest part fine, but somehow lost my edge later, likely due to a combination of speed, and lack of concentration. During the fall, I lost my skis, and slid on my back for a good 30m. Fortunately, some good Samaritan collected my skis for me. When he handed them back to me, he said, "That was a spectacular fall!" -_-;;;; My coworker was laughing, "You fell on the FLAT part" and "Stay away from the green trails!" -_-;;;;

Unfortunately, during this particular fall, I jammed my right knee into the snow, and re-aggravated a latent injury. My knee really started acting up. I took it easy the rest of the day, and just stuck with blue and single black diamonds. The day got progressively better, and the sun actually came out. The temperature was a balmy 6C, which is a nice change from the freezing temperatures. I was sweating a lot, and actually wanted to take some layers off. If only the snow wasn't as slushy.

Finished the day off at 4:30pm. I was dead tired. Since I didn't have to drive this time, I was zzzz for most of the trip back. I tried really hard to stay awake too. Waking up tomorrow is going to be interesting.

Lesson of the day: Always read the trail NAME. If it's foggy, study the trail map first.