Workout Log: 23 - 26 January 2017

Three days of skiing in Telluride, which has a base altitude of 8500 feet and a peak of over 12,500 (higher if you do the hike-to terrain at the top of Palmyra Peak). I don't have the GPS data from my watch yet, because the dongle required to get the data from it is back in my apartment, but I do have the SkiTracks data.

23 January 2017: skiing (11 runs)
9039 vertical feet, top speed 44.4mph
I did this day on my regular skis (160cm K2 Rictor) and it was a decent outing, although they've been getting a fair amount of snow here and I was having trouble in some of the deeper pow. My skis are great for pretty much everything except powder; they're sort of short and narrow, which means that I tend to get stuck.

24 January 2017: skiing (7 runs)
9452 vertical feet, top speed 39.1mph
Tried some demo skis - 180cm Salomon "Soul HD" - and I absolutely hated them. The extra width was nice for the deeper stuff (at one point I was literally up to my knees in pow), but generally I just couldn't feel comfortable. Apparently I also thought it would be a good idea to take these into the ungroomed and mogul-heavy side of Henry's, and that was a shit plan right from the start. They didn't ski anything like my regular skis, and even though the snow conditions were quite good, I just wasn't feeling it, so this ended up being a shorter day. I also biffed it three times; two of those times were when I was barely moving and just fell over. Those are the most embarrassing falls. At least if you're flying and you wipe out, it looks cool, and you'll probably have a yard sale and just slide down the mountain a little.

25 January 2017: skiing (17 runs)
15337 vertical feet, top speed 43.1mph
Now this is more like it! I decided to try a different pair of demo skis - 172cm Black Crows "The Orb" - and they were great. Yes, I admit, part of the reason for wanting to try a pair of Black Crows is because, well, come on, black crows - it ought to be obvious.^[1] But they were actually really good skis, too.

Normally I like to warm up on an easy blue run before trying anything potentially stupid, but as A and I were going up lift 9 we saw what looked like a pretty nice run off to the right that was almost assuredly a single-black. So, despite being on new skis and generally being a chickenshit when it comes to this stuff, I decided to say "what the hell, let's try it." Off we went, and my first run of the day was on a single-black down the upper part of Plunge and into Bushwacker.^[2] This turned out to be pretty cool for a few different reasons.

1. I'd never skied a black run at Telluride before. Even though I've recently skied black runs at other mountains (Heavenly, Kirkwood, Northstar), seeing that little black diamond still gives me pause. In my head, I know that I'm a better skier than I give myself credit for, but there is still a non-trivial fear factor when approaching unfamiliar territory. This is amplified by the fact that Telluride is known as a difficult mountain, and many of the double-blue runs here (Henry's and Stella, for example) would be considered single-black runs elsewhere.
2. I was on skis I didn't know anything about. When I took the Salomons out on Tuesday, my first run was down an easy blue off the top of the gondola, and I knew right away that I didn't like them. The Black Crows were another story; I liked them instantly, but I still wasn't familiar with how they'd perform once I really got into it. Even though it's going to be cold as balls (-30 with wind chill !!!) on Friday, I think I'm going to have to go out for one more day on the mountain with my K2s (or maybe get the Black Crows again) to see if I can tell the difference.
3. A has some background and training as a ski instructor, and as we were making our way down the mountain, he pointed out something that nobody else has ever told me. Turns out (no pun intended) that all this time, I've been using the wrong pole to make my turns. Previously, when planting a pole to make a turn, I'd been using the outside pole, so if I wanted to turn right, I'd plant with the left pole, and to turn left, I'd plant with the right pole - my thinking had always been to use the outer pole to give myself an extra push into the turn. Nope. That's not the way it's supposed to be done. The correct way is to use the inside pole, so left turns are done with the left pole, and vice versa. Basically, the pole should be providing more of a pivot point to initiate the turn rather than a boost to help you exit the turn. So now I'm in the process of retraining my brain to do it the right way, but A noticed a significant improvement in how my skiing looked and the fluidity of my turns just as a result of this small adjustment.

Unfortunately, I still managed to fall on my face once while on the Black Crows. While trying to get over to lift 12 coming down from Woozley's Way, I screwed the pooch, took a wrong turn that I thought was going to be a fun shortcut, and ended up in the trees closer to lift 14. The only way out was to go down a really short but steep section that reminded me of a little part of the Von Schmidt at Heavenly back when I was first learning to ski - except that this little stretch was much steeper and there wasn't anything to do but put on my jetpack and go straight down. I was OK until I tried to make a slight adjustment coming out of the bottom of the drop, and then POW! ... right in the pow.^[3]

We took it relatively easy for the rest of the afternoon; A's knee was bothering him from the previous day, and it was starting to get colder than either of us was willing to put up with, so we took a few more runs off of lifts 12 and 5 and then made our way back down. I was actually surprised that we did a total of 17 runs over the course of the day.

26 January 2017: rest
N and S left on Wednesday, and A left this morning, so now I'm the last one here until I go home Saturday morning. I originally had plans to go use the fitness center and do some upper-body work, but instead I just took the day off, caught up on some sleep, and wandered around town a little bit. Speaking of sleep, I should actually be sleeping right now, but I'm not (and I'm hungry), and since Baked in Telluride opens in an hour, it's likely that I'll wander over there at 5:30 and get some breakfast, as there is no food left in the condo other than some cereal that S bought and a few bananas, and we are out of anything to drink other than water.