I now understand the scary and real possibility of contracting snow blindness. Yep, snow blindness. Yesterday Ben and I went XC skiing in total and complete and wicked whiteness. With no trees in sight, no landmarks, and scarce visibility due to the falling snow and grey sky, we had only the barely discernible diagonal tracks left from the early morning grooming to keep us from accidently wandering off the beaten path. Fortunately, I was wearing sunglasses, which helped keep the glare and burn to a minimum but they did nothing to improve my vision. It was a surreal feeling to be surrounded by absolute whiteness, and add to that the difficulty of skiing in deep, fresh snow, it was an exhausting, tough day on skis. Mostly we were skiing 5-6 inches below the top of the snow so it was anything but fast but it was an incredible workout - one of the hardest days I’ve had on XC skis yet. At least I had one good laugh when Ben missed the track and went skiing through snow up to his knees before going “poof” into the deep, soft snow.

Previous to skiing at Catamount Lake, we went to Howelsen Hill (home to many Olympians), which we were told had great XC tracks to offer and a sweet ski jump to boot. What no one told us was that the XC tracks went either up or down - NO FLAT whatsoever. No joke. No exaggeration. Up or down. Plus, we went UP from the word go - no warm-up, no time to get used to the skis again, no time to think about technique. Go up or go home. So, we went up and up and up and finally after I couldn’t take anymore up, we got to go down, down, down. Down straight to the car, then straight to the hot tub, and then straight to the couch for a nap.

I’ll be going back to Steamboat again for sure, but hopefully next time I’ll be a little more adept on XC skis so that I can get up the hills without hacking my way up and down the hills without screaming like a girl.

Here’s to hills and whiteouts…
Meredith