Worst conditions of the year

Today was the first time all year that the skiing conditions have been terrible. Since it is Spring, the weather has been warm and melts the snow every afternoon. Overnight it freezes and is rock hard the next morning. Most days it thaws by mid morning and the skiing is good. Today it stayed cold the entire day and everything was so icy. I spent most of the day inside just beacuse the skiing was so bad. I guess I can't complain about only one bad snow day all season. It is forcast to snow a lot over the next 2 days (in feet) so hopefully tomorrow will be better.

Derrien posting up on a rail

After the lifts closed we headed back over to Brian's house to finish off the food and beer. His house backs up onto the Trygve's terrain park. We went out there for some after hours jibbing. This is Christian taking a sled over the funbox.

Believe it or not, he's on the clock right now.

One of my bosses has a really sweet slopeside house at the base of Peak 8. Today he had a party for the whole department. The weather was very nice. Today was the first time I've worn a T-shirt outside since I've been in Breckenridge. It was a great day for an outdoor party.

Back on the Slopes

My injury is turning out to be not that bad. Besides my nose being deformed, I am in almost no pain. The only discomfort comes from me not being able to blow my nose for the next week, so it is getting pretty stuffed up. I skied today for the first time since the injury. Only one day of skiing was lost while I was resting. It actually made me feel a lot better to get back outside and on the mountain. One side effect from the injury is that my confidence was destroyed. I was really timid in everything I skied today. Hopefully I'll be back to skiing form in a few days.

This is where I fell. Pretty embarrasing to get injured in this spot considering all of the extreme stuff I have skied this year without incident. My coworkers have been joking that we should name this section of trail "Ross' Nose". They have also started saying that when you fall on an easy run you "Pulled a Ross". At least I might have some legacy here:-)

I got blood all over my ski as well. Not really sure how this happened

My glove was what I initially used to try to pinch my nose. O.J. would be proud.

Ouch

I broke my nose at work today. It happened right after I got off the first chairlift of the day. There were a couple of new inches of snow on the ground and it was pretty windy. I skied through a powder wind drift that was very deep. The sudden drop threw me forward and I face planted onto ice that was behind the drift. It was kind of a freak accident because the fall was caused by about 2ft of powder, but the injury was caused by bare ice that was just feet away. It isn't very common to have those two things so close together on the mountain. Some of my coworkers and some ski patrollers fell in the same spot, but they had better luck than I did. I had a pretty good idea right away that I had broken my nose. It started gushing blood. I've never bled so much from an injury in my life. Luckily I was only about 100 ft away from the ski patrol hut, so I just walked over there to begin getting medical aid. After the bleeding subsided, they gave me a ride on a snowmobile down to the medical center where the doctor checked me out and took x-rays to confirm the break. Surprisingly it doesn't hurt all that much. It just feels like my nose is really stuffed up and has some pressure in it. The cartilage part at the tip is pretty tender as well. I have to go back in a week for another check up and they are going to try to straighten it out. I'm not sure how this will affect my skiing. Hopefully it won't completely end my season.

The ski season is winding down at Breckenridge and although I have skied here a ton of days this year there are still a few runs that I have not skied. Today at work I started to check off the last of these runs. Most of the runs I have yet to ski look like this one (Goodbye Girl <><>) with poor snow coverage. This run, suprisingly, was a lot of fun despite the dirt patches and trees. It was a really warm day and the snow had gotten pretty slushy and soft. I think I have about six more runs to do that are lift accessed and a couple hiking routes as well. Should be no problem to do them all.

Baseball Season

I'm glad it is baseball season again. It was hard going two months without any good sports to watch.