Day 74 - fresh snow and an adventure

The snow was falling today at Sugarbush. The main trails at the resort ranged from decent to downright awful. Katie and I spent a lot of time in the woods, where conditions were pretty good to just short of spectacular, as can be seen from the photos below shot with the Sony A6000 and 35mm prime lens.

The really interesting story of the day, however, was our last run of the day. We decided to head into the woods in Middle Earth to skier's left. I had done this with my friend Rob on a couple of occasions last week, so I knew it would be fun. However, at a critical juncture, we greatly extended the run and headed to skier's left instead of exiting the woods to skier's right.

The first sign that we might be off track came when I told Katie I had to slow down to avoid a sinkhole with a small pool of water showing. However, we came into a beautiful field of powder with sparsely spaced trees and continued to skier's left. The problem was that after we exited that section, we were sent down a chute and were looking down at a gulley.

I told Katie we could either hike back up or try to continue down the gulley. We decided upon the latter. The gulley was really a river, and we were basically going very slowly next to it, skiing and riding what we could, all while trying to avoid falling into the numerous sinkholes. At one point, we crossed from the left side of the gulley to the right, and then we started heading uphill. That was fine for Katie on skis, but it took me a while in the snowboard, since I had to get out, and when I tried to walk, I was sinking to my waist. We were more than a tad bit worried, so I pulled out the Sugarbush app to locate us. It seemed like we were headed towards a trail we knew, which was a relief.

At that point, we kept on going, but didn't see any signs of a trail. Finally, Katie spotted a trail we knew. But it took me a while to catch up with her due to my slow progress in the deep snow. Finally, I caught up with her and we both made it out. Fortunately, there was plenty of snow, and it was only 3PM in the Spring, so it wasn't too late in the day. We were glad to make it out...

Unfortunately I don't have photos to document the adventure. Katie and I both thought about getting the camera out, but we were actually much more concerned about just trying to get out that taking photos. It was lovely, but you'll just have to take our word for it.

Day 34 of snowboarding