First Tracks, and some serious snow.

 First Tracks is the facility offered by the Ski Co for guests to go up on the lifts at 8am before they officially open and having a couple of runs with selected ski pros on untracked snow. It’s part of Mary’s job to organize this and put guests names on the list as each Friday comes around. This means that she (and I ! ) can join the selected group since Fridays are our days off. Thanks to Mary we got ourselves included in the season’s first First Tracks and celebrated with a bottle of Laphroaig at the top to commemorate a guest who had  died earlier in the year who was a regular First Tracks attender and apparently an avid Laphroaig connoisseur. Two great runs down from the top of the Elk Camp chair, suitably refreshed and on untracked snow.

The snow has now arrived big time. 5 feet of new snow on the tops and 4 feet in the village in the last week of the year. Hallelujah.

Made for some interesting bus driving though. Here on the No 1 Woodbridge run at the sometimes tricky Seasons Four turnaround. This though before the snow storms. Sheet ice instead.

Sadly though now confined to barracks for 5 days having both tested Covid positive despite 2 vaccinations and a booster and probably having had Covid before. Very mild symptoms through, so for us at least, no big deal.  Surprise, surprise.  No worse than a bad cold.  We’ll still get out skinning but staying well clear of contact with anyone. A week of work on full pay quite acceptable! Lucky through to be Town and Ski Co employees respectively. So hard for small business owners and so many vulnerable people on both the health and economic sides. 

Pics at top. M and I on the roof at 270. Shoveling - at least starting to. A confinement opportunity and to protect the structure of our house it needs to be done.

Finally, our friendly visitor of the previous post came back to see if there was any more bird seed around. Clearly he hasn't yet learnt the hibernation trick yet.  This though before the storms, so finally he might now be away.

Happy New Year to all readers !