Back to Engelberg

...for the best day of skiing all year!

It had been snowing lots all week, so a whole group of us went up to Engelberg on Feb. 11 for a wicked day of skiing. It was a pretty standard ski group (me, Richard, Tommy, Lindsey, Adrienn, Shane, Evan, Kevin, Mike) with an addition of Vance and Sepehr (from Alstom I think). I skiied with Lindsey, Tommy, Richard and Adrienn. Sepehr had been boarding a few times before, and Vance has been skiing one in his life, so the 2 of them stuck together on the easy slopes....though we convinced Vance that he could probably handle the 1 degree steepness difference of the red (intermediate) runs.

We cruised around the mountain enjoying the beautiful deep powder. I had adjusted my bindings the night before for non-ski-losing awesomeness, so it was nice not to be constantly sifting through the snow for my ski. I have defiinitly started to get the hang of skiing better in powder...or at least masted the art of falling in a way that's easy to recover from, lol. I did a few drops that went well, its sweet to just sorta melt into the landing and you can't even tell the difference between being on snow or in the air.

Lindsey and I tired out the run that tried to eat my ski last time, and I totally got my revenge on it. The snow was so amazing...seriously, nothing I write to describe it could do it justice, so I really shouldn't bother trying. I think the run way mad at missing out on another chance at my skis though, cause it tricked me into taking a traverse that turned into a massive cliff...."la de da, skiing is fun, HOLY CRAP I'm FLYING THROUGH THE AIR". That's pretty much how it went. It's funny, cause everyone I've told the story to has asked "so, did you land it?". Of course not! I barely knew which way was up...I do know I screamed the loudest I think I have ever screamed though. Anyways, that was one time I was glad that my skis came off...but enough about that, before I scare my mom too much ;) Sorry mummy, I swear I'm being safe :)

Met most of the crew for lunch....it was funny because we chose to eat at the top-most eating place...making Vance and Sepehr come all the way up to meet us. Then we informed Vance that the only way down was a black run, but he insisted on taking the gondola down (wuss!!!!).

After lunch Adrienn and I decided to switch snowboard and skis for a run (yay for same size feet!). She was pretty decent at skiing, and I rekindled my dislike of snowboarding and falling all over the mountain. Haha, I got the hang of it a bit, but once I tried to start doing actual turns there was infinite falling on my face. I swear I almost did one sucessful turn though....but the run was over before I got enough practice. We opted for swapping back before the tricky black run, after realizing that there was no way we could make it down alive. We did get some funny looks trading boots on the hill though, haha....brrrr....

After lunch we went back to the awesome run with everyone, and rode that all afternoon (I avoided the cliff this time, yay). For the ski out I met up with Vance and gave him some end of the day coaching, he was doing pretty well, even on the icy red run I convinced him to try (haha, I'm mean).

It was definitly my best day of skiing so far this year.... amazing snow, and nice sunny weather. Hopefully there's a few more like that before the season's over!
Sorry I have no pics for this post...I'll put some up if I track any down, I can't remember if anybody brought a camera.