persee
Ski Diva Extraordinaire
So this past weekend was very eventful. Those of you who've seen my posts in the gear forum about my boots know that the slop boots finally came to a head, but that was only part of it.
First things first DH and I picked up our passes for next year - Threedom - which are good to ski the rest of this season. This means we can ski at Bretton Woods, Cranmore and Waterville Valley. So we'll be trying to get a lot of skiing in for the rest of this season. So we got the passes and skiied on Saturday at BW which I'm really coming to like. It was a really good day overall despite the slop boots. I figured out how to position my feet in those boots to get the max out of them - not great but it made it possible for me to ski longer and harder on Saturday. I also learned that the reason I wasn't able to lay back as much on my AC3s (sure I know they don't like laid back skiing but they should let me do it occasionally) was completely boot related. The condition was interesting and I just had a really good day. Felt really good on my form and charged through some different terrain and felt good in it. This included bumped up powder on the sides of runs (although it was getting between powder and mashed in texture at some points) - DH usually leads but in one section of this stuff he let me take off and I was just flying. Letting my body be relaxed and when I got bounced a little just rolling with it. Nice aggressive form just reaching down the hill. I felt great. DH even said he felt like he had to work to keep up with me there.
Boy I love my skis! Then we did some other skiing around - DH is much more adventuresome since he got his properly fitting boots and now that he's got good skis - upgraded to ones a proper length - he's really going further on the mountain which is good because it pushes me. So we went off and tried the Blue glade. I'm always freaked by the idea of glades but a coworker told him he really should try it so we did - I got in there and was skiing along and going "hey I can ski this". I know it' was only a blue glade but it really wasn't as difficult or scarey as I thought. Next time we go find a diamond glade or two (provided there is still adequate snow cover!). Then we get out and there's a choice between taking a relaxed blue trail back to base or doing a diamond - DH chooses diamond. I'm now (from having done a few) getting to them and going "hey I CAN ski that" and just having a blast. I just feel like I had a really good ski day. I also got more of a feel for my AC3s. Had a couple places wehre I could just put them on edge and let them run like they want - and wow. Like ZZOOOOOOMMM! When I let them carve the bigger turns fully they're like a little sports car - usually traffic on the trails prevents me from really letting them run in the turns so that was really cool. It was just a great day of skiing. I feel like I had one of those big "jump ahead in skills/confidence" days which was awesome. We planned to ski Sunday so we called it a day earlier than we might have to save energy for skiing again.
By now the boot issue was coming to a head. DH was convinced I needed new boots - I was too but figured I might be out of luck. He had a complaint about his boots so we went to visit his boot fitter to get that resolved and then once again asked about boots for me - see my "Boot Dilemma" thread for details on that experience. Basically came down to this boot fitter could not or would not help me. So we gave some thought to what to do - poked around online to see if I could find that thread that used to exist on Epic/AlpineZone of recommended boot fitters to no avail and continued to ponder what to do that night.
Next day wake up to ski - "ooo where did these sore muscles come from?". I knew I had pushed myself on Saturday but didn't think I'd pushed that hard. Oh well shake it off and we head over to Cranmore to ski - already had concluded that this would be the last time we'd ski there this season. Get to the mountain and it's more crowded than we've seen it before in the parking lot - turns out there was a HS championship going on so many of the cars were spectating. We get on the slopes - we'd had our skis waxed overnight - and the condition is miserable very waterry mashed potatoes. Well in complete opposition to the previous day my skiing is just not quite right. I just can't get in a rhythm and my posture feels wrong, etc. May jsut have been a combination of the sore muscles, the nasty condition, the wax on the skis making them want to zoom away, and the nasty crowds of snow plowers on trails not suited to them. Either way it was just an off day so we called it quits early.
DH convinces me to stop at a ski shop on the way home to see what they may have to offer. Go in and explain the bad boots that I know they're too big and that I prolly need a 23.5. The guy listens to this, also what type of skiing I'm doing/want to do, measures and examines my feet and brings out a couple of boots. The boots were a Saloman Idol 8 and a Tecnica either Attiva M8 or Flame. He put me in the technica first - it felt a lot better than my old boots but I felt like my forefoot had too much wiggle room side to side and up and down. So he has me keep that on while putting the Idol8 on my otherfoot. Wow this fits nice and around my foot perfectly. The length (a 23!) fits perfectly and my forefoot doesn't have much play. I can wiggle my toes up and down and scrunch them up if I try but nothing side to side. No pain either. So we scratch the Technica and put on the other boot and I clomp around the store a bit. So long story short(er), after I get over the concept that I'm going to be spending more on my boots than DH (guess that Salomon just costs more than Dalbello) I take the plung and get new boots. They did the heat fit for the liners on the spot and adjusted my bindings at no charge. This store sold langes, salomons, nordicas, dalbellos, and tecnicas so there was a good range of boots - guess I just have a salomon shaped foot.
I'm a bit nervous but excited to try out the new boots. In the mean time I will be scaring the kitties this week as I clomp-clomp-clomp around the house in my new boots to break them in. Now it Mother Nature will only cooperate so I can try them out on Saturday...
(yeah sadly the only thing I don't like about the boots is the color. I ended up with the white/red color version as opposed to the black and gold one. I know it's superficial but they just don't go as well with my skis! However I guess if that's the biggest beef I have....)
First things first DH and I picked up our passes for next year - Threedom - which are good to ski the rest of this season. This means we can ski at Bretton Woods, Cranmore and Waterville Valley. So we'll be trying to get a lot of skiing in for the rest of this season. So we got the passes and skiied on Saturday at BW which I'm really coming to like. It was a really good day overall despite the slop boots. I figured out how to position my feet in those boots to get the max out of them - not great but it made it possible for me to ski longer and harder on Saturday. I also learned that the reason I wasn't able to lay back as much on my AC3s (sure I know they don't like laid back skiing but they should let me do it occasionally) was completely boot related. The condition was interesting and I just had a really good day. Felt really good on my form and charged through some different terrain and felt good in it. This included bumped up powder on the sides of runs (although it was getting between powder and mashed in texture at some points) - DH usually leads but in one section of this stuff he let me take off and I was just flying. Letting my body be relaxed and when I got bounced a little just rolling with it. Nice aggressive form just reaching down the hill. I felt great. DH even said he felt like he had to work to keep up with me there.
Boy I love my skis! Then we did some other skiing around - DH is much more adventuresome since he got his properly fitting boots and now that he's got good skis - upgraded to ones a proper length - he's really going further on the mountain which is good because it pushes me. So we went off and tried the Blue glade. I'm always freaked by the idea of glades but a coworker told him he really should try it so we did - I got in there and was skiing along and going "hey I can ski this". I know it' was only a blue glade but it really wasn't as difficult or scarey as I thought. Next time we go find a diamond glade or two (provided there is still adequate snow cover!). Then we get out and there's a choice between taking a relaxed blue trail back to base or doing a diamond - DH chooses diamond. I'm now (from having done a few) getting to them and going "hey I CAN ski that" and just having a blast. I just feel like I had a really good ski day. I also got more of a feel for my AC3s. Had a couple places wehre I could just put them on edge and let them run like they want - and wow. Like ZZOOOOOOMMM! When I let them carve the bigger turns fully they're like a little sports car - usually traffic on the trails prevents me from really letting them run in the turns so that was really cool. It was just a great day of skiing. I feel like I had one of those big "jump ahead in skills/confidence" days which was awesome. We planned to ski Sunday so we called it a day earlier than we might have to save energy for skiing again. By now the boot issue was coming to a head. DH was convinced I needed new boots - I was too but figured I might be out of luck. He had a complaint about his boots so we went to visit his boot fitter to get that resolved and then once again asked about boots for me - see my "Boot Dilemma" thread for details on that experience. Basically came down to this boot fitter could not or would not help me. So we gave some thought to what to do - poked around online to see if I could find that thread that used to exist on Epic/AlpineZone of recommended boot fitters to no avail and continued to ponder what to do that night.
Next day wake up to ski - "ooo where did these sore muscles come from?". I knew I had pushed myself on Saturday but didn't think I'd pushed that hard. Oh well shake it off and we head over to Cranmore to ski - already had concluded that this would be the last time we'd ski there this season. Get to the mountain and it's more crowded than we've seen it before in the parking lot - turns out there was a HS championship going on so many of the cars were spectating. We get on the slopes - we'd had our skis waxed overnight - and the condition is miserable very waterry mashed potatoes. Well in complete opposition to the previous day my skiing is just not quite right. I just can't get in a rhythm and my posture feels wrong, etc. May jsut have been a combination of the sore muscles, the nasty condition, the wax on the skis making them want to zoom away, and the nasty crowds of snow plowers on trails not suited to them. Either way it was just an off day so we called it quits early.
DH convinces me to stop at a ski shop on the way home to see what they may have to offer. Go in and explain the bad boots that I know they're too big and that I prolly need a 23.5. The guy listens to this, also what type of skiing I'm doing/want to do, measures and examines my feet and brings out a couple of boots. The boots were a Saloman Idol 8 and a Tecnica either Attiva M8 or Flame. He put me in the technica first - it felt a lot better than my old boots but I felt like my forefoot had too much wiggle room side to side and up and down. So he has me keep that on while putting the Idol8 on my otherfoot. Wow this fits nice and around my foot perfectly. The length (a 23!) fits perfectly and my forefoot doesn't have much play. I can wiggle my toes up and down and scrunch them up if I try but nothing side to side. No pain either. So we scratch the Technica and put on the other boot and I clomp around the store a bit. So long story short(er), after I get over the concept that I'm going to be spending more on my boots than DH (guess that Salomon just costs more than Dalbello) I take the plung and get new boots. They did the heat fit for the liners on the spot and adjusted my bindings at no charge. This store sold langes, salomons, nordicas, dalbellos, and tecnicas so there was a good range of boots - guess I just have a salomon shaped foot.
I'm a bit nervous but excited to try out the new boots. In the mean time I will be scaring the kitties this week as I clomp-clomp-clomp around the house in my new boots to break them in. Now it Mother Nature will only cooperate so I can try them out on Saturday...
(yeah sadly the only thing I don't like about the boots is the color. I ended up with the white/red color version as opposed to the black and gold one. I know it's superficial but they just don't go as well with my skis! However I guess if that's the biggest beef I have....)
It was definitely "your turn!" Hope they work out great! Also, congrats on the Threedom Pass! I think most of the places should hang in there with what's forecast, doesn't look too awful/bad yet. BW is known for hangin' in there late, and spring skiing there can be a total blast. (love the views from there also)
