No country for old men

It's been snowing like crazy for days now. In the forest there's  a foot of powder.  The branches of the birch trees are bending under the weight of the snow.

This morning I joined little boy and his buddy in the off piste.  Little boy moves  like a ballet dancer on his fat skis, zig-zag between the birch poles.  For me it got too technically difficult; too steep and too dense forest. After two runs I was totally exhausted. This was no country for old men.

I took a break, with a cup of coffee and a cold raspberry juice.  Then I went looking for some easier powder, more suitable for an old man like me. Found it and had a good time in the white gold >:)

P'S.  I borrowed the title of the post from the book by Cormac McCarthy.  Great book by the way.

(Picture taken in the birch forest today.)

Another day on fat skis

We have got plenty of snow the last week.  This weekend the snow continues to fall. Today I have another day on the fat skis, in the powder,  off piste.  I listen to an audio book on the lift,  "My Struggle" by Knausgård. I'm almost through the first 5 volumes now.  Very good books. Recommended. 

I'm alone, just by myself.  That's great. I like the loneliness in the sparse  birch forest.  It's not that I dislike people, but I need to spend time alone, to relax and get away from all the expectations. That's what powder days are for >:)

( Picture taken 20 minutes ago. I wrote this post on my cell phone )

Crowded

It's so crowded on the mountain today.  It's the annual ski testing weekend, and the Alpine Racing World Cup is visiting.  Last weekend was much better. We even got a day of powder skiing. Some days are great. Some are not so good. That's life.

(Picture taken in the powder one week ago.  The skier is Little Boy)

Gold rush

Yesterday we had a crazy storm coming in from the west, with strong winds and lots of snow. Today the wind had calmed down. It was time for the gold rush.

The white gold; tons of it. Awesome!

Little boy and I took our skis and went out in the mountains. We had a full day of off-piste skiing in the powder. It continued to snow all day. Great. Best day of skiing so far this season.

(Picture taken today. The skier is little boy, and the photographer is me.)

New winter

The last weeks of March were warm and rainy. Then came the Easter holidays with cold weather and snow. Lots of snow.

A new winter starting. Great!

We got some sunny days when the best thing to do was skiing in the backcountry. Alone in the wilderness, the tracks from our own skis where the only signs of human presence.

But most of the time tons of powder was falling from the sky. It's not often we get such large ammounts of dry snow in April. Little boy and I named it the Judas powder, in honor of the Easter jerk.

I borrowed older boy's wide rocker skis. We got a great time of off-piste skiing. Little boy enjoys jumping off cliffs (I'm too old for that). We're not speaking of very high cliffs, just 4-5 m (12-15 feet). No problem with a soft and steep landing beneath.

Once he lost a ski in the landing. It was buried under a foot of snow. We searched and dug for it, and it took us almost an hour to find it.

You see, that's the Judas powder >:)

Tomorrow I'm off to Moscow again. No powder I hope. It's just gonna mess up the traffic.

(The picture is from a trip on crosscountry skis in the mountains.)

Powder to the people

We had a really heavy blizzard this week, lasting for five days.

This weekend was the time to harvest, from the heavy snow fall. We went up to the mountains, and had a great time skiing in all the fresh powder.

The wind calmed down, but the snowfall continued throughout the weekend. I was off-piste skiing in the sparse birch forest with the kids. Today, it was powder all over the place, even on slopes that are normally groomed. Great! The white gold >:)

(I forgot my camera at home. The picture above was taken about a month ago. It's Little Boy skiing in the birch forest. This seemed to be the weekend when we forgot almost everything. When we stopped on a gas station on the way to the mountains, I found that I had forgotten my wallet and my cell phone at home. I asked my old lady to pay, but she had forgotten her wallet too. Fortunately, Little Boy had some cash that he got for his birthday a couple of weeks ago. He was kind enough to let me borrow his money >:D )

Powder and broken glasses

We got 25 cm (10 inches) of dry white snow last night. Today we went up to the local ski resort.

Older boy and his buddies got to try their rocker skies, for the first time this season. Rocker skis are wide skis with inverted shape (banana shape), built for the sole purpose of deep-powder skiing. They look almost like water skis with alpine bindings (picture above).

I skied with little boy and a friend of his. The other boy wasn’t very experienced, so I tried to teach him some basic skiing technique; goal-keeper position, with arms forward, moving weight and pressure from left to right to left, in long giant slalom turns. For effective skiing, the weight must be on outer ski and upper part of the body facing down-slope all the time (powder skiing is slightly different, but that’s for advanced skiers).

For some reason, I wrecked my glasses while skiing, my regular reading glasses. I ski with goggles, but keep my glasses in the pocket, to be able to read my cell phone and other things that I need to read. When we finished skiing the glasses were broken in my pocket.

I know the way back home very well, and I was able to drive, but I couldn’t see a damn shit of the speedometer nor the signs by the road. We stopped at a gas station when we got back to town, and I bought some cheap +2.5 reading glasses for $10.

They will do until tomorrow. See you later >:)