skiing
Erin organized a cross-country skiing adventure on Sunday with her friends and co-workers. It's been about 15 years since I'd done this, but it was pretty fun.
We rented equipment at Meadowlark in Sandy, bought chains because it was snowing, stopped to chain up because a sign told us to, got back in our cars because a trooper told us not to chain up where we stopped, stopped about 100' down the road to chain up, chained up, parked at Government Camp, trooped across the highway to find the West Leg Road trailhead, and VIOLA.
Nic prepares one of the many snowballs she launched at me that day.
Petey and Justine, Erin's co-workers.
Nicole in the foreground, Brandon in the background, Erin in the snow.
To be fair, I fell down a lot, mostly on my face. But, since I had the camera, when I was not busy falling down, I was taking pictures of Erin falling down.
Such as this one.
But she made herself a snow boner.
What I didn't get was a shot of her getting the tip of it in her mouth.
Wish I had more pics, but I was having trouble manipulating the camera with gloved hands, and putting the gloves back on after taking them off was a surprisingly time-consuming process.
The weather was really good ... bright, but overcast, with very light and intermittent snow, and freakin' COLD. The only wind was where we parked, and otherwise the air was still and quiet. The trail was pretty empty, our party of 8 met a few other folks during the several hours we were out, but because so few people were out, there was a lot of powder to slog through if you strayed (or fell) off the compacted path.
We followed a gentle climb, and I think we traversed a few miles over as many hours, then turned around to come back. The slope was enough to glide most of the way down, in several instances picking up enough speed to get out of control (at least for me), so I did most of my face plants on the return trip.
Tons of traffic on the road down from the mountain afterward, but we persevered and made it to Edgefield for beers and nosh.
Awesome times. Thanks, Erin. :)