I said goodbye to Breck yesterday at closing day. There was so much snow still, especially on the upper mountain.
Honestly, I shouldn't have skied. My knee hurt the moment I stepped out of bed. It hurt with every step of the ten minute walk to the lift. It hurt skiing down to the SuperConnect to get me to the Vista House, where I'd planned to meet some people.
I knew I needed a warm-up run, but I didn't want to be late.
So I sat with Fran, an older friend who charges harder than most men in their prime. I realized I really would have had plenty of time to take that warm up run and test my knee. More people trickled in. All hard chargers. I worried that they'd of course want to go up high to the challenging terrain right away, but they were smart and wanted to ski the slush bumps. But I also realized that today, they would be out-pacing me by a long shot (as opposed to normally, when I'd be last, but within an acceptable margin).
As we got up to go ski some mellow terrain, I saw a friend from my lesson group this season. I excused myself from Fran and chased Tracy down. Yes, of course I could ski with her and her husband! Phew. She warned me they were only doing a few runs, then going down to watch the Plunge. No problem. I knew my knee wasn't up for many runs today, anyway.
We headed to Six Chair. From there, I did a couple of runs down 4 O'clock with Tracy while her husband took Amen, a natural half pipe filled with slush bumps (although at this point it's filled in enough that it's almost flat across). My knee loosened up enough to ski Amen with him, and I was happy with my skiing - although at the bottom, he asked which knee was bothering me. I told him. He nodded.
View of the E chair bump runs from Amen. Does it look like closing day to you?
They headed off to the base while I took another run down Amen. It hurt. My knee was so stiff that it was like skiing on a peg leg - no joint at all. I made it down just fine, but it hurt. I wasn't sure about my options to get back down to Peak 9, but I decided I didn't want to walk back up to the condo from that base, anyway. So I took one more ride up Six Chair. I shed a few tears, thinking I'd really wanted to say goodbye to Whale's Tail, at least. But it would have been painful, if not stupid, to try. I can hold on to my memories from a couple of weeks ago, when my knee was much better, and I had several really wonderful runs there.
I saw my instructor friend Kevin and his student at the Vista House. I stopped in and, while they took a breather, shared the Dancing with the Mountains videos - both the original John Denver and the one this season at Alta, which led to me showing the student a video of Ski Ballet. Kevin said he did some ski ballet early in its development, but not in its heyday. The student said he really wanted to go watch the Plunge, but Kevin convinced him to do one more run up high before calling it. I told them I'd go find us some seats at Roy's.
Original:
Remake:
So I painfully made my way down the blue to the bar. It was Slorp City, and every little jostle hurt my knee. I tried to make it bend, but I couldn't, so skiing was ... interesting. I found a nice spot seated and facing the Plunge, although you couldn't see the water, just the entrance and the exit. They had towels for everyone coming through, which I thought was a nice touch.
I chilled at the bar for a couple of hours with Kevin and his student before I limped to the gondola, limped to the bus, limped to the condo. I'm glad I skied, if only for a few runs (and Chair 6 didn't register for EpicMix! I don't even get credit!). I'm glad I had one more slush bump on Amen. I don't plan for this to be my last ski day of the season, but I'll miss Breck, and it feels so sad to close when there's so much snow out there still. My knee has been alarmingly sore for the last week, but it should recover eventually ...
Me and Kev: