February 09, 2006, Alpental

2/9/06 - Thursday night at the Alpental Vertical-Ice-Skate-O-Rama. Arrived at 7PM to super hard, rained on on Wed, then re-frozen snow. Temp right at freezing and it was windy. Clear sky with moon & stars made for great visibility. Super hardpack snow that had been thoroughly scraped down made for a "pay attention to your edging" eve. The hard to ice to sugar scraping transitions felt like driving too fast on the freeway in highly variable gusty winds. Had to just work with the occasional skid out like drifting a car. Everything was super fast though - saw several racers unable to stop in the hard snow and slide into/under the net at the bottom. Lift was just ski right on for the two hours we were there. Did I mention that the snow was hard? TomK, Kerry, Eric on skis, and Chad the uniplanker.

I took two runs up there in the morning, had a vicious skidding wipeout (one of those slides that just doesn't stop), left some blood (from my nose) to mark the crash, then left for Ski Acres where it was just barely marginally better. Talk about sketchy ski conditions.

When it gets icy, you have to ski soft and supple. Kind of like trying to spread peanut butter on soft bread. If you push to hard , you'll break the bread. So go easy. When you start skidding out ease up on the edges and just flow into the next turn. That is, unless you have razor sharp, GS style ski edges. I think only Bode has those. ;D