Ice, Snow, Wild Skiing

Friday I woke up with the worst allergies ever, just about. Couldn't even open my eyes, and they were a vicious shade of red. So I decided I was going to stay home. Then I heard the kids were staying home, too, owing to the ice storm which had started to sweep in. It kept on right through Saturday morning, putting more than a quarter-inch of ice on everything. There are tree limbs and downed power lines everywhere, although we got off light and never lost power. Quite the spectacle. It's beautiful, in a way, but also devastating. Not sure what will happen to the trees, which had been tricked into starting to leaf last week. The raspberry canes are pretty tough, but I'm not sure about the dogwood shrubs and the lilies, which had just started to poke up and are now green shards of ice. In-laws have been without power since Saturday, not likely to get it back anytime soon. Sister-in-law was coming up for the weekend and ended up staying with us, which thrilled the kids and made it easier for us to get out early yesterday morning for The Most Amazing Skiing Ever. What fell as ice here fell as more than two feet of snow up north, and if we could have gotten out Saturday, we would have, but yesterday was just fine, too. Powder, deep deep powder. Powder like I've never seen. Powder so deep you could trip and do a face plant, and when you tried to push yourself up, your arms wouldn't touch bottom. It made the intermediates about as much as work as the diamonds because everything was clumping up. We did the whole mountain, including one trail that was just about untracked entirely, where we really had to learn to float. Unbelievable day. It was cool and windy, but the sun was out, so we'd be chilly on the lifts and boiling on the runs. So nice. Now for another week of work.... Ugh.