March 20, 2000

A Minor Tragedy

It wasn't a great day, but it had nothing to do with the ski conditions. First our 12 year old son rebelled with a snit on the way to the ski hill and returned to the house for a non stop orgy of tubes (TV, computer, Nintendo etc.).

Next I got a single picture from my beloved Nikon 950 before it succumbed to a lingering function switch problem and refused to power on. I have since been able to get it back on, but it is clearly very sick and apparently cannot be repaired under warranty due to some vender/manufacturer tiff. I can only return it for a refund and go searching for another camera. Maybe I should put a black ribbon on my web site as a sign of my mourning.

Finally I discovered that not one, but both of my ski bindings now allowed my boots to slop back and forth almost a half a centimeter at the toe. It turns out that a little dooflickus (take that spell checker) in the heel piece had bent and needed to be replaced. However it seems that this is a common problem with these Rossignol bindings and if it can happen to both heels on skis with less than 70 days on them, it doesn't bode well for the future. Another sigh...

Oh, the skiing. I bet you are much more interested in the skiing than my woes and the news there is generally good. The conditions certainly weren't as good as they were over the weekend, but it was still pretty nice. It was sunny, which is of course nice, but I am beginning to regard the sun as an evil thing that lures us with its pleasant rays while rotting our snow right before our eyes.

Currie opened this morning and our 8 year old daughter Tara escorted us down through its center trees. These had fairly stiff snow that skied well enough, but was several ticks off of powder. Down by the gully the snow became quite sticky, although not really all that bad.

Much better was Snake Main, although Tara, making her maiden voyage down this run, opined that it was rather heavy. Certainly it wasn't light powder and it was rather cut up, but I still found it pretty delightful to slice and dice. I also managed a run down Bear Chutes and the snow in there seemed to be pretty high quality. Probably the North facing slopes had the nicest snow, but I once again had an abbreviated day as I took off early in search of various repair folk.

At twenty after four it is 7 C on my porch and still a gorgeous sunny day - perfect for pictures. :-(