Another big lesson of the season? Conditions are challenging? Go ski! Take your time, work on turn shape, stay balanced. Poor visibility and challenging snow make one a better skier. You need to be able to handle anything. Ski the hard stuff enough, it makes the easy stuff a WHOLE lot more fun!
Yes! There is so much YES in your post, but this is the one that stuck out for me and something I focused on all season.
Wrapping up my 5th season with 40 days and possibly a few more. I also hit 100 total lifetime days skiing a few weeks ago. My mantra all year, was, "Try new things and in new conditions." I am EXHAUSTED. <I also started a new job; this may have contributed
> Pushing myself every weekend was tiring, but so so worth it. We have so much acreage at my two home mountains (Heavenly and Kirkwood), and I feel like 80% of it off-piste, in the trees, or after a long, kind of sketch traverse. But that's where all the goods are! A few other things...
-A former racing coach told me, "People only get injured when they turn," i.e., keep those skis pointed down hill! I can be kind of a thrasher of short turns, so I'm working on longer turns that cover as much vert as possible. I also worked on speed in general, realizing it can really be my friend in the Sierra Cement.
-It's okay to go back to basics. And it's okay if progress comes in fits and spurts (and sometimes goes backwards). I was making solid progress at the end of last season but then lost my mojo in the middle of a big 9 day ski trip through Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming. It was like I forgot how to ski. I decided, screw it, I'm just going to take a bunch of lessons till I get it back. I spent some time rolling my eyes at the drills I've done before (patience turns, picture frame with the polls, etc.),
but it totally worked.
-Women skiers are amazing!! I took a two-day women's clinic at Kirkwood this year and was just blown away by the support and camaraderie. It was on a weekend we got 10" of fresh the first day and 15" the next day, so we were all kind of flailing. But our instructor took us on this crazy run we never would have done ourselves. Ran into one woman from my group this weekend, and after I reminded her about our clinic, she was like, "Oh yeah! The day we did Notch Chute!" It was obviously a big day for everyone. The women on this forum have also been incredibly supportive. I had some very stressful/dark times with the new job where I thought I made a terrible decision, like, what-am-I-doing-with-my-life kind of days. I knew I could just come to the forum, start reading, and be reminded that there are amazing, helpful people out there who all feel very passionately about skiing and are always willing to pull you out of the rut and get you back on the hill.
.
