Ski until you're wrecked!

Bretton Woods partially recovered from last Sunday's warm deluge. They re-opened 30km of trails. Conditions were vastly different though. The base was very thin, hard, with a little packed power on top. It did not mask any of the natural contours of the earth underneath. This meant a full suspension mountain bike would have been a much more suitable means of conveyance. By staying super cautious, I managed to stay upright for the duration, but Dave and Brett had a few "blemishes" in their workout.

There was a good loop nearly 10km in length that went over Coronary Hill via the Sebosis trail. The vertical pales in comparison to Waterville's 800ft Tripoli Rd climb at only 350ft. Challenging conditions made up for it. There were open waterbars, deeply rutted icy sections, occasional roots, dirt poking through and more.

My goal was to ski N+1 laps, where N was the number of laps to cook me. Then do one more. N was 3 today, so we did a 4th lap. About seven months worth of accumulated injuries all caught up to me on the fourth lap. Titanium ankle went into major funk, my good ankle which I tweaked a month ago went achy on me, and my sprained wrist from back-flipping on ice last weekend refused to transfer force to the pole. I felt like a 48 year old man. Aren't we athletic types supposed to feel younger than our age?

Anyway, we decided to do our last lap in reverse skiing up B&M trail. Brett was bonking with Dave and I trailing. Dave got impatient, asked to pass. Of course I wasn't going to let Dave ski away from us. I had to get by Brett too, against all common sense. I'm sure I looked like I was skiing with a broken leg and arm chasing Dave up Porcupine. Dave threw down the gauntlet on the descent. I put out the white flag. I was wrecked enough without taking a header through the sketchy sections. We skied very nearly 40km in 2.6hrs. A good second time on snow this season.  I forgot to bring my camera, so you're stuck with a boring profile plot.

Besides killer views of Mt Washington, one of the best parts of skiing at Bretton Woods is a warm shower and fresh towels afterwards. It's included with the trail pass. Interestingly, while we were kitting up before the ski, a bunch of high school team girls stormed the men's room to use our toilets. Guess they were on the road a while and the line was too long in the girls bathroom. I hope they at least sent a boy in to scout it out first, as the showers are directly across from the toilets.

Looks like my next chance to ski will be in Michigan at least a week from now. Thanks for reading.