Annual Ski Day 2014

It's that time of year again - my annual ski day has arrived (yes, I've made it to a second year of annual ski days!)

The weather report indicated that it was going to be a good day on the slopes, so we were bright and cheery as we started out at 7:30am. Yes, I was on time even though it was early on a Saturday. I carpooled up to Mt. Hutt with a couple of my coworkers: Kelly Murphy and Rich McGill.

I was a little worried as we started ascending the mountain because we ran into so much fog that we could barely see in front of the car. There is no way we could ski in those conditions. But then, we rose above the cloud cover into clear blue skies. Hooray! Here are a couple of pics overlooking the cloud cover.

The clouds go on forever!

Because we got up there early, we made it through the ticket lines quickly and were soon ready to get skiing. We went up the bunny slope once and then we were ready to jump on the chair lift for our first run.

Kelly Murphy

We got one of the ski instructors to take this pic - he forgot to include the rest of our bodies to show we were on our skis!

Amazing day to be skiing! 

 The picture above doesn't really do the slope justice, the but end of the run straight ahead was pretty steep and icy. As we got braver throughout the morning, we decided to go down this part to increase the difficulty. This was the only time I fell during the morning! Funny part was that I fell about 30 feet from the bottom - I was this close! LOL.

We stopped for lunch around 12:30pm because we were absolutely starving and we had already done about 7 runs - and we were tired!!! We ate on the balcony of the ski lodge. I had some okay pizza (the cheese was like velveeta, which was really really weird) and some really good banana cake.

Starting in on my pizza while we waited for a table.

At lunch, we met up with a few of our other coworks - Ryan Pengelly and Pete Clarke (although Ryan recently quit so he doesn't really count as a coworker anymore)

And there's the yummy cake - thanks to Kelly for taking a picture mid-bite!

Ha - one Diet Coke vs. a table full of Corona's

After lunch, Kelly and I decided we were going to keep pushing ourselves, so we went from the 4-chair lift to the 6-chair lift. The first lift only goes about half way up the mountain whereas the 6-chair went the rest of the way to the top. Once we got up there, I got freaked out but there was only one respectable way to get down.

We took it slow and made it without falling. So we did it a few more times! Here is our view from the top - you can see the lodge at the bottom. Our course took us out of the picture and to the right a ways and then we snaked down. It was so much fun.

 You can tell that the snow is starting to melt (we are only a few days away from Spring) so some of the courses were actually closed. While we were riding up the chair lift, we saw a part of the mountain that looked beautiful and powdery. This is what we saw when we tried to go that way. Guess it wasn't safe!

We made it down the mountain a few more times after lunch before our legs just couldn't keep us stabilized anymore. For the last two runs, we caught up with Rich McGill and his friend and ski'd down with them. The last run we told Rich we were getting to tired and wanted to take an easier way down. He yelled for us to follow him. Like fools, we followed and then he turned around and laughed at us as we tried to get down this extremely steep hill he took us over.

By the end of that run, my quads were completely shot and I could hardly turn and cut. So again, I fell right before the bottom of the hill. It was so hard to get up and make it the last 50 yards or so - but eventually I made it.

I don't look as tired as I feel!

While we were waiting for Rich to get done skiing, we went and checked on our buddy Pete. He had never been skiing before, so he decided to give it a go and was taking a ski lesson. I am really glad I learned as a teenager when I had more energy and muscles because it looked hard. We also got a kick out of watching him hang onto the instructor. Good job Pete!

Finally it was time to go home. I was really proud of myself for improving so much over last year. Kelly and I had a blast (at least I hope she had as much fun as I did!). Thanks to my PwC friends who let me tag along with them for ski trips.

We were glad to see that the cloud cover had dissipated during the day so we had a much safer trip driving down the mountain. Gorgeous views from the cloud. And no snow - hard to believe we were just skiing!

P.S. Thanks Kelly for letting me steal your pictures since my phone is a piece of junk. You are the best!