Skiing on snow, not ice?!

I headed up north to go skiing with my dad at powder mountain and snowbasin. Snowbasin is where the 2002 Salt Lake Olympic courses were. By riding a small tram and listening to a "you might die skiing here" spiel from the lift operator, you can get up to the ridge at the very top where the downhill start huts are. Below the starts was a snowfield that was amazingly fun to ski down, but only while making lots of turns. I can't quite imagine going straight down it at 80 mph like downhillers do.


Earlier in the day, the mountain was entirely shrouded in dense fog. I couldn't see more than a dozen yards. One side of the mountain had almost no trees, and there would be sections where nothing was visible but white. No trees, no skiiers, no signs. I couldn't tell the ground from the air. Gravity was the only sense I had left, the only thing to do was go down (and hope a sketchy cliff didn't materialize out of the fog. Later in the day, the sun finally appeared.


The other mountain, powder mountain, lived up to its name, and I got to ski real, western powder for the first time in my life. It really was floaty and lovely. But bizarre to ski in - you have to lean back (which goes against everything I have ever learned about skiing on ice back east).


We weren't allowed to burn real wood in our fireplace, so we got a firelog that spewed green flames. Kind of wierd, but kind of fun too.