This was the view (seriously, the actual, unretouched photograph) when we got to the top of the lift in Vail. Blinding blowing snow. Once those 2 people were out of sight, which was like 10 seconds later, it was just white. Aside from the obvious decline of the hill there was no way to know where one was heading. Just down. I’d been there before. I knew where I was. I knew there is nothing exactly life-threatening hill-wise in the vicinity, and the situation was frightening to me. But for Ashish, who was on a ski hill for the first time in his life after one day’s lesson (on a hill that was small enough to be serviced by an escalator-people-mover thing), this was a little more than he had anticipated. He wanted to take off his boots and walk down. This was not possible. Not only was I unwilling to do that with him, he’d never have gotten there on his own, it’s freaking miles of walking in ski boots. Down a mountain. In blowing, blinding snow. This would end up to be The Revenanent, I was pretty sure—although I haven’t actually seen the movie. There was nothing to be done about it but ski down. And we did that, not exactly shush-booming all the way but we got there without injury or even harsh words spoken. When we finally got to the bottom, he went home.
I felt bad about that but I didn’t blame him.
I went back for more. The sun came out, there were 4 inches (all of which fell in about 2 hours) of fresh, if somewhat sticky snow, and it was pretty fabulous. But who wants to hear about that?
