An important part of my religion is that: if there is enough snow for skiing, then there must be skiing. Today was our first snow of the year.
Given that it was 63F/17C yesterday the fact that it is snowy at all is a small miracle. Obviously the very first light flurry of the year doesn’t count for skiing, right? But this is no casual autumn flurry. It’s cranking down! I did my normal walk in the woods and was getting covered in snow. Hmmm. It may barely be feasible to do the absolute minimum skiing possible. Is it? Well, best not to anger the snow gods.
Yes! It was possible! Barely. I was compelled to try out my outrageously awesome Fischer RCS Skate Plus Nordic skate skis.
I was satisfied with their awesomeness just sitting near me in my office. To be able to just touch and hold these unbelievably light skis in my hand was worth what I paid. But today I skied on them! It wasn’t much, and it was about as bad as conditions can be and still be called skiing, but I did it. The hilarious thing is I wiped out twice. It really is extremely challenging to skate ski on a very thin layer of very wet snow. I was covered in mud when I came in. But I had a great time! And once I found the cool spots in my yard and adjusted my thinking away from classic Nordic technique it was just barely doable.
The chance of me moving back to Alaska just went up quite a bit.
And how was the weather 5 hours later in the afternoon? If you look carefully you can actually see my ski tracks in the grass.
I even finished the raking that I started yesterday. Still this morning’s snow wasn’t bad for the first of the season.