Day 55 a painful day

And I am not talking about the skiing but an injury that I picked up in a stupid fall. Not too serious but the first time I have been driven off the hill by pain in 7 years so I guess I can't complain.

The cool down forecast for last night didn't happen to the extent anticipated and it was about zero when we got to the hill and overcast. My thoughts were that all the South facing stuff yesterday would have been sun affected and therefore chunky this morning so the way to go was to either hit the north facing slopes or the south facing ones where trees would have provided shade from the direct sunlight.

A quick run back through the Gun bowl proved that the sun affected snow was indeed hard. My guess was that Cougar Glades would be good and I was dead right. Still soft untracked blow in most of the way down with just a bit of rain crust to negotiate on the way out - very mellow.

After giving Lift Line such a good write up yesterday I would have expected it to be kind to me today but it wasn't. In the final section as I landed a turn my uphill ski landed on a hard death cookie and slid into my downhill ski effectively wiping muself out. On the fall the slow twist of the ski push the boot into my right calf muscle before the binding released.

When I got up and skied down to White Pass I was in a lot of pain. I tried a groomer run off the top of White Pass and back to base which was ok but painful. Next I went back to Cougar Glades and whilst it was ok the pain was just too much and the turns to the left not in enough control for safe tree skiing.

After a break and a rest it was apparent that to continue would risk further damage so I was off the hill by 11. The good news is that it is just muscle pain with swelling and bruising and no damage to a joint, ACL, MCL, ITB etc so it should get better pretty quick. The bad news is that we are due a powder cycle, things seem to be socking in on the hill and may have to miss a day or two although with luck I will be able to manage groomers at worse for a couple of days.