February 20, 2011

President's Day Powder

Andrea, in her new pink bombshell jacket, tearing through some powder off the Pink Pine ridge

Winter has returned in a big way! In the middle of the week, upper LCC received about 18" of snow, and so far this weekend, we've gotten 25-30" more! We forgot how fun powder skiing is!

On Saturday Andrea and I opted for a later start (we've been running a lot this week, more on that in a minute*) and headed up the Pink Pine ridge. We skied 3 awesome laps off the ridge in boot deep snow. We broke out the camera for a few action shots, but it was hard to get great pictures because the snow just didn't let up... by the time we woke up on Sunday morning (6am) the resorts were reporting 15" overnight, and the UAC had issued an avalanche warning. So we busted out a quick run, then headed up BCC to ski our 2nd day of the season at Solitude. The snow was RIDICULOUS! First few laps were knee deep all the way, no exaggeration. The whole day was an absolute blast... it was so good that we didn't even stop to take one single picture!

*Training update: I cranked out 145 miles this week with a long run of 3 hrs 11 mins. Andrea ran ~60 miles with lots of cross training, and 5K PR (on a training run). She also really helped me out by pacing me for 2 hrs of my super-long run on Wednesday. We're going to run a 15K next weekend as one last tune up for Antelope Island, assuming the weather is decent.

I have tomorrow off from work, but Andrea doesn't. Originally, my plan was to shoot for a 15-20,000 foot vertical climbing day, but the avalanche forecast is a bit sketchy right now, so I don't know what I'm doing yet. [Tuesday Update: Due to the avalanche warning, lack of partners, and other circumstances, I ended up not skiing on Monday... instead I managed to log my biggest running mileage day ever (32.7 miles, of which Andrea ran 17.5 with me) and ate 4 bowls of ice cream... I'd call that a successful "day off." The 2-day storm total ended up being nearly 4 feet!]

Now for some pictures from Pink Pine on Saturday:


Busting through a cloud of cold smoke


Andrea is all smiles when the snow is this good


My turn again


And a few more of Andrea... you can tell the snow is really coming down


So this is how good it was on Saturday... add 15-20" to this, and that is how deep the snow was on Sunday. You can use your imagination... it was amazing!


Our GPS route on Saturday. 3 laps off the ridge.


The only picture from Sunday... a screenshot of Solitude telling us that we were in for a bigtime powder day!


I turned on my GPS while we were skiing at Solitude. Kinda fun to see all the laps we did.

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