Slashed them all

More than half a dozen ridges reach their fingers through the property.  On many I have cleared several new descents in the last five years or kept existing trails open with constant removal of windfall branches, fully downed trees, or trimming away head-knockers. Maintenance never ends and if the snow piles deep, the ski trail feels like it never ends too.

On this day I vowed to hit every trail in one ski session and lay down a base time. The key was just to power through every climb and stick every landing no matter how intense the name of the descent.

I laugh at some of the names I assigned to runs at four-years-old: Kindergarten, Cliff and Killer come to mind. The more sinister the name the greater the likelihood I fell on it back in the day when I would step into my three pin bindings on my red Gravdal skis. Then I associated the success of my day to how many times I fell. In my mind I would subtract one fall if I ironed out a walrus track my big sister left in the trail on a fall and I did not lose verticality. 

I still use the same names for those runs today. Some of those runs of the early 80's no longer exist, filled in by the constant creep of the forest on hills that once rolled open.  Jump, for instance succumbed to the forest and over all those years I never caught much air on it even though I tried. I have no designs on cutting it back into existence.   

This year I point my tips down Slash, Flash, Gravesend, Barnburner, Escape and Side Saddle for the first times. Each brings its own challenges. The fact that I escaped injury on all after multiple drops thus far in the season is a minor miracle. This winter may stretch long with many more opportunities for me to kill myself, so fingers still crossed, just hopefully not my ski-tips.