Day 39 - Thursday Mar 6 - David Bowie and Samwise Gamgee

No, I didn't ski this morning with a rock icon and the most loyal character in literature. In fact, I skied this morning with my dogs of the same names (not a coincidence). It is becoming that time of year when my ski partners begin to dwindle off and desire to ski ridiculously early in the morning less and less. I, on the other hand, recognize that I have the powderkeg in a little over a week and I need the training. So I found two ski partners that are always up for some time out - my dogs. For Christmas I was very excited to get a pair of Karhu Guides. This is a scaled ski that still has metal edges and a decent side cut for the downhill, but does not require skins for the up. Today was finally the day I would get to try them out (the skiing has been too great out there before now). I took Bowie and Sam up to Porter Fork at 5:30. We began ascending around 6. I was a little bummed out to find that I kept slipping on my skis. I could only take slow, small steps if I wanted to keep gaining ground. This was a bit frustrating since I really wanted to go fast this morning and get some really good exercise. I did get exercise, but mostly in my arms after having to pull myself up the mountain in many spots where my skis would not climb on their own. I didn't let myself get flustered because it would not have accomplished anything. We ascended until about 7 and then I decided it wasn't really worth going any further. We had gone a bit beyond the end of the road and into the trees, but we would have had to have gone much further to get some real turns. So we skied down. The lack of a skin transition was nice, but not nice enough to really make up for the hassle of the skis. They did rather well on the downhill. I actually quite enjoyed them, but I still think I may be putting them up for sale. The idea of these skis turned out to be far greater than the skis themselves. Oh, well. I had an enjoyable morning spent with my dogs. They had the time of their lives. This was Sam's first time skiing in winter (he has skied once before but that was in August/September up on Timp). On Ski.