day 36. skiing. sunday river. 1/16.

i had the left side of the mountain. saturday of mlk weekend: generally one of the busiest days of the year. got spruce first and american express was still good. broadway was excellent. quite a line for the barker chair. after seeing sergio at the top, i headed down ecstacy and cascades to lansa at the top of tempest. from there down monday mourning and up to the top of locke. when i came down upper sunday punch that was the first sign of the damage done by heavy skier traffic. down cascades to roadrunner to the #11 chair. after that, assumption was also fairly scraped off. i met kasmira at the bottom of the white heat chair and we rode up together with a couple of her teammates from telstar who are in the gould sunday river program. we saw a wicked wipeout on white heat by someone who was sliding and sliding down the headwall and couldn't stop. when we last saw them they disappeared over the next roller in a cloud of snow with skis flying off. later that day the rumor was that someone had taken a fatal fall on white heat that day and of course i now wonder if we were witnesses to it. the skier was desperately trying to stop sliding when we saw them. most likely, it was not them, even if there really was a fatal accident, but i will never know. kasmira was basically interested in getting cash for food from me and headed off. after that shack i was basically done and headed in to meet kasmira. we were trying to coordinate to meet with ken and sue from bridgton even though cameron wasn't skiing because he was sick. they were on barker but headed back to jordan so we headed that way to see if we could connect. kasmira also hadn't been to jordan yet this winter. we took the chondola to paradigm and then up the aurora chair and down to jordan. when we got to the top of jordan they were already closing of lollapalooza except for hotel access. we would have had time to scoot down but kasmira couldn't make up her mind and/or understand the whole reasoning behind closing the trail form the top instead of the bottom (so people don't show up at the bottom after the lift closes and get stuck down there with no way out), she was confused, disappointed, and angry as she stormed off on kansas. personally, i enjoy kansas on skis so i didn't share her moods. when we got back to south ridge i assumed she would continue skiing while i went in for our weekly safety meeting but she was still upset and said she didn't want to. i then offered to get her skis tuned because i realized before her race that she hadn't had a tune all year. after we dropped her skis off she then decided she wanted to ski after all yet when i offered to go get them back she became even more upset. i had to go to my meeting so i sent her home on the explorer. once the meeting was over and i went home i had to head right back to the foggy goggle to work. it was quite a fun night at the goggle as the place was packed and really hopping. kasmira wound up ice skating with her friend shannon. it was kind of a crazy day with the massive crowds and rumors of a death (that we might have witnessed) but i managed to get around 13 hours in on the clock as well as quite a bit of skiing. it was just the beginning of a looong weekend.