What a day.  This was my last day snowboarding.  It wasn’t as awesome as I had hoped.  I went by myself, traffic was horrible, whine, complain.  Then the last run, I decided to take a tree run off a green that no one had taken.  Somewhere in the back of my head I could hear the voice of past mistakes saying “No! Bad idea!”.  But, how bad could it be?  What?  They’d pull my pass on my last day?  It was steep.  It was untracked.  It was wonderful.  It funneled into a deep hole with almost vertical sides and no logical way out.  Crap.  I decided to try to get out by going back the way I had come just before going into the deep hole forever.  It took a half hour of post holing up a near vertical slope with snow up to my mid thigh.  Thank god for the snowboard instead of skis.  I could use it to put my weight on so I wouldn’t sink as far and carve away some snow so I wouldn’t sink as far.  It took a half hour to get back to the green trail I so badly wanted off of earlier.  It was more cardio than I’ve seen in the past couple months combined.  I was delighted to take that green run all the way to the bottom and back to my car.  Did I learn my lesson?  Probably not.  I’m sure the lure of fresh untracked powder will call to me again and I’ll follow, but not for a while as there is no snow awaiting me in Thailand.  This picture isn’t from that run, but from the run before it that wasn’t quite as awesome or as terrible.

(c) all rights reserved Kimberly Fiore