My alarm was set for 7:30, but I was up at 6:44.
I checked the rest of the Oscar winner list, checked my mail, and the morning Snowshoe Snow Report and Forecast.
We packed up our things, packed them in the car, and headed out to the slopes—just about right at lift start time.
What we didn’t know was that of the seven lifts, only three of them would be open this morning for most of the morning.
The good news was that at least there were a couple of real nice (read: groomed) runs around a couple of those lifts. That bad news was that only three lifts open means long lift lines (and these are the slowest damn lifts), which is exactly what started happening after an hour or so.
Every time we rode up the Powder Monkey lift or the Grabhammer lift, we looked to the left to see if the Ball Hooter lift had started running yet.
Eventually, we did see it moving, and even though no people were on it, we made our way over that way to check it out. We had to go down an un-groomed blue slope, complete with moguls, where I took my first tumble of the trip. It took a long time for my left ski to finally snap off as I tumbled. Not pleasant.
After five or so minutes of standing precariously slanted on the steep slope trying to first put on my “downhill ski,” and then finally getting the other one on, we were back in business, only to find the “Closed” tape across the slope that lead down to the Ball Hooter lift—it was still closed to skiers even though it was “running.”
Eventually, it did open up, and there was a mass migration over to that area of the mountain. After a run or two, we stopped for a Hot Chocolate, during which we found out that in addition to the Cup Run (two “black” trails) side not going to be open all day, neither was the Widowmaker run, which is one of the other black slopes that we like.
With that, Rick took an extra run in this area, and then I joined him as we headed back to the Powderidge lift, from which we’d make our exit from the mountain.
Once we reached that side, we did a couple of nicely groomed, and totally uncrowded runs on Yew Pine before stopping at about five minutes until 1:00.
The road down the mountain wasn’t too bad, and we drove (about 17 miles) down to Marlinton, where we stopped at a DQ so that I could change out of my jumpsuit, and to have lunch.
We took a different route home, which seemed way out of the way (i.e., like going west to get east), but after getting off Route 219, it was all highway, and it ended up taking about the same amount of time to get home as the other, smaller, twistier-roads way that we’d taken to get up there.
I heated up the leftover grilled-chicken-in-spaghetti-meat-sauce that Rick had created, diced up the chicken breast after it was heated, and poured the whole concoction over some whole wheat pasta Rotini noodles, which was just delicious. Thanks, Rick!
I caught up my personal e-mail, and then logged into work to see what that “queue” looked like. Full.
I canceled a class I was signed up for at State in the morning, and got to bed early so I could get up early. I fell asleep shortly after 10:30, with my alarm set for 6:30.