A little mountain time at Silver Mountain

I have one rule when it comes to winter weather – if it’s going to be cold, there has to be snow. Mother Nature has been breaking this rule quite a bit this year and while I appreciate the safe drive to work every day, the slushy weekends have been a bit of a bummer.

Luckily, we got in at least one good day up at Silver Mountain, although more would be great. Two weeks ago, after getting a few inches of fresh powder, Kyle, Megan, Dylan and I packed up their Subaru and headed up to the mountain. On the way up, the weather was dark and rainy; the roads lined with muddy slush. We talked about work and the dogs. I asked Megan and Dylan about skiing as Kyle thought I should try switching from my board.

“Falling might be easier for you on skis,” he explained.

As we neared the pass and entered the Silver Valley, the clouds began to clear and we were surrounded by fresh, white snow. We entered into a very rare, bluebird day.

Kyle and I took 4-5 runs back-to-back as I got re-accustomed to my board and carving – last year was my time really carving on a snowboard. Kyle, as always, humored my timid nature and just met me down by the lift, encouraging me to carve on the cat track leading up to the chairs.http://youtu.be/jKiWsS7WfikAfter a few runs we decided to meet up with Megan and Dylan before heading in for lunch. We waited at the bottom of chair two. We waited some more… then Kyle’s phone rang.

It was Megan. She explained that she and Dylan crashed into each other and his knee was injured. They were loading him onto a sled and heading for the ski patrol office. We headed up to the lodge to eat and wait for our friends to pack up so we could take Dylan to the urgent care. (Dylan had surgery to repair his ACL this past week and is doing pretty dang good.)

It was a short bluebird day, but probably one of the best boarding days I’ve ever had.

On the way back to Coeur d’Alene that day we recounted the accident and were thankful it wasn’t worse. I turned to Kyle and said, “Falling on skis seems worse, I’ll stick to snowboarding.”