A very windy Tuesday

Cameron and I got to the Canyons Lodge at Mammoth and hurried outside to ride the lift up.  I hardly noticed the wind until we were already riding up the mountain.  And then I really noticed it.  I couldn't hear anything over the sound of the wind and my nose and mouth hurt because snow particles were being blown in my face.  Cameron saw steep powder that he needed to ski and so I said I would meet him later and he was off to ski first tracks before I fully unloaded from the lift.  The snow was blowing across the goggles and I couldn't see the ground in front of me.  I was curious which way I should go.  I decided that strait down looked hard and opted for skiing to the the skiers left.  I realized too late that I had skied down out of the return to the Canyons lodge and I would instead be skiing to Mill.  This wouldn't have been a big deal except I was unwilling to go back up to the wind again.  I waited for Cameron to call when I didn't show up.  (Cameron forgot his cell phone so he ended up borrowing phones from nice fellow skiers each time he needed to meet up with me.)

Cameron skied down Viva several times and enjoyed some powder and then wondered where I was.  I told him I got lost and frozen and was sitting in the lodge regretting coming to ski.  He insisted it wasn't that bad and that I should try skiing again.  He said he would meet me in an hour.  I decided it couldn't really be that bad despite the full restaurant at only 9 in the morning.  I went back out and rode a chair lift up.  The wind was so bad it scared me and made me want to cry.  I have never experienced anything like that kind of cold.  My head hurt from brain freeze even though I wasn't eating ice cream.  I got lost again and ended up skiing down Broadway right into the main lodge.  I now was convinced I never wanted to ski again and rode a parking shuttle back to meet Cameron.  

Here is a picture of Cameron's tracks.   He had several fresh untouched tracks and felt accomplished skiing down in this area.  

 Here is a picture of the snow and how deep it got just from snow drifts.  We only got about 5 to 8 inches of snow overall.  

 After Cameron and I finally met up we decided to ski the bottom of the mountain in the trees.  Cameron worked on teaching me some parallel tips which I used to get more efficient with my turns.  He also tried to get me to ski faster and I went faster but not fast enough for his liking.

After freezing for a few more hours we had enough of the cold.  We were hungry and tired and headed back to the condo a little early.  We drove around Mammoth a little, shopped at each store in the small village and looked at all the restaurants and decided to eat at Gomez's for dinner.   Later we enjoyed the hot tub!  I wish we had one of those to relax all my muscles and warm up after a day of skiing at Snow Valley.