Yet another great day skiing

Sunday couldn't have been better. The temperature at Lake Louise was around +5c but the snow was still light and dry. Dennis was taking step-son, Myles, to the snow for the day and they very kindly invited me along.

I'm starting to get the hang of this skiing caper - keeping my weight forward, smooth transitions. It all makes for ability to handle steeper and rougher sections, more confidence, and ... a great deal less fatigue! Apart from about 45 minutes for lunch, we skied from 9:30 to 3:30. I did 11 long runs while Dennis and Myles, who go for the steeper and faster runs, did at least 13. Myles spent the whole day testing himself on the moguls - magnificent to watch. Dennis skis like he's standing and watching the scenery, except that he's moving straight downhill at about 80Kph - annoying to watch. I'm still very much on the green (and sometimes blue) slopes - probably very sad to watch.

Only one little adventure when I took a trail down to where I could get a better picture of skiers and boarders attacking a long wide section of moguls, only to find myself at the bottom of the hill on a flat surface amongst nearly two metres of powder. My poles pushed right down to the handles and I had to carefully "snow-shoe" my out to the next slope. Maybe six skiers found ourselves in this position, and we left behind several boarders who were screaming in frustration when they sank to their chests trying to push/walk out.

Unfortunately the only way out turned out to be a double-black-diamond grade slope. (Double-black-diamond is code for "screaming maniac".) With little choice, I set off, trying to follow a contour off to the left to where I was confident I'd meet up with a regular blue-grade slope ... Fortunately I managed to get down fairly quickly and comfortably - at my first fall I simply allowed myself to keep on sliding down the powder on my side, skis held off the snow on my boots, about 50 metres, nearly all the way down to the bottom. It was fun! I wanted to do it again. Maybe with time I'll try such a slope standing up.

We three were pretty tired after all that.

We returned to Dennis and Robin's house for a magnificent steak dinner. With it, we shared a bottle of Vasse Felix Margaret River Shiraz, plus the usual liberal quantities of bonhomie, wine, deep debate about everything, and good humour.

Sunday couldn't have been better.