Val Skiing – Day 2 (St Paddy’s Day) 17 March 2008
Today we awoke to about 20+ centimeters more snow, and the sound of cannons or dynamite shaking loose the avalanches before skiers hit the mountains. Pretty scary shit, as Jim says! Here is Jim skiing the powder – they went out earlier than I did, to scope out a new peak and ski the harder stuff, the one just above us – Face d’Olympique, one of the hosts of the 1992 Olympics. When I joined them they were already stuffed from working the deep snow. And we skied with virtually ZERO visibility the rest of the day; sometimes it was like skiing in milk soup! Very strange, scary and difficult for me – to ski without seeing where I am going, or seeing the moguls on the slope. I ski largely for the scenery it offers, and there was NONE today :(.
Such long runs! Our elevation gain is typically over 1k, and the runs are often over 3k from top to bottom!