Part of my "stay-cation" involved actually getting out and doing something fun. One of the great things about living in Utah is how close I am to great things I can do in the outdoors. On Friday, I went skiing up at Solitude with my friend, Boyd Lythgoe, and his dad and brother. But before I left, I looked outside and saw this:
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| Gorgeous sunrise from my front porch. |
Once skiing, the snow was great and we had a good time. I took one good spill, one in which I kind of spun around out of control, lost both skis, and banged my head on the snowy slope. I sat there for a minute afterward, making sure I knew what day it was. I thought at first that the only injury I got from that was a pulled muscle in my upper thigh, but later on, when I got back from snowshoeing on Saturday, my neck muscles on both sides of my windpipe, and my lower abdominal muscles were in a great deal of pain. I didn't do anything snowshoeing to hurt them, so it had to have been from the crash skiing the day before.
Sometimes the effects of injuries don't show up right away.
I was skiing on some used skis that I picked up at the thrift store last year, along with boots and poles. I was into the entire set for less than twenty bucks. I'd tried to get a ski shop to adjust the bindings properly for me, but the said that they were too old and there were liability issues on older bindings so they wouldn't do it. I found a
video on youtube that showed me the basics. Apparently, I adjusted them properly because the skis came off when they needed to and didn't come off when they didn't have to. I had also
tested them prior to hitting the slopes a couple of weeks ago (I never took a bad enough tumble that week for them to be tested).
Anyway, we did over twenty runs (I actually lost count at about five), and I didn't have any falls until the afternoon, which were products of tiring legs and waning light.
Two of the original four of us stayed until the lifts closed. Here are a few more pics:
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| My friend, Boyd Lythgoe (far right) and his dad and brother who went with us. |
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That's me coming down the slope.
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On Saturday, I went snowshoeing up Big Cottonwood Canyon. We started at the
Mill D Trailhead. It was fairly well packed down and we could've hiked it in our boots. We went in about 1.7 miles to where the trail forks. One side goes to Dog Lake, which is another .6 miles, and the other fork goes to Lake Desolation, another 1.9 miles. We decided to go off trail at this point to get some actual snowshoeing in, so we headed over to a powdery patch and ate lunch, then snowshoed through the powder for maybe 100 yards, and joined the packed trail headed back down. After a while we took off the snowshoes and just hiked. It was a great day to be out having a
mountain adventure. Of course, it's rare that it's a bad day to be having such an adventure. It beats staying in doors nearly any time.
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| Yours truly cutting back to the trail. |
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From L to R: Boyd Lythgoe, Steve Nye, Darren Nye
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| The nearby peaks were beautiful |
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| Boyd and the others checking out the view across the canyon |
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