As the pendulum swings back the other way, skiing has been the sport of choice these last several days. Yes, I got down to sedona this afternoon, but I’ve also hiked snowbowl 3 times, been to the nordic center 3 times, and had 1 day of backcountry since tuesday.

Needless to say, I’m a little beat.

Unfortunately, tuesday morning I was still a little out of it from the weekend and a bad night of sleep, so I forgot my skins. It was a long bootpack up to midway, but the turns were worth it. I got up there in time to see the colors on the clouds below.

I rocked out to the nordic center after work that day, and repeated the same schedule wednesday as well. Thursday was a much needed day off, and friday I jumped back in with a hike up the bowl with Mr. Brad VanOrden.

That morning, I had one of the weirdest hikes up, yet. This is going to sound a bit strange, but I think I was pretty darn close to actually sleepwalking up the slope. I remember conciously closing my eyes while hiking, and only opening them every 5-6 steps to make sure I was still headed in the right direction. I did this all the way up the first couple pitches, and only finally got my eyes to stay open at the top of tiger (about 1/3 of the way up).

I just couldn’t keep them open. I’ve had this experience once or twice before on my bike during a 24 hour race, and I have to say it’s kinda scary how hard it is to keep your eyes open. This was the first time I just kinda went with it (or was in a situation where I felt like I could).

Does that actually count as resting at that point?

Whatever it was, another nice hike up was capped with a nice run down that morning.

On saturday, I hit up some backcountry with Curtis. We found some powder stashes just below Philomena in the trees, and then hit some nice turns though a sun-softened Allison Clay on the way back. It was Curtis’ first BC experience, and I think I’ve hooked another one to add to the army of BC skiers here in Flagstaff.

We ended with a beer on the deck at snowbowl while commenting on the people waiting in line for the lift and their current level of naivety. It’s really one of my favorite apres ski activities.

Sunday marked my first skate ski race up at the nordic center. I didn’t do great, but I didn’t do half bad either. Supposedly the full results are up on the site, but if you follow the link above and try clicking results, it’s a broken link. I’m not too worried about it, because if they post the results I may find that my delusion of ‘middle of the pack’ may be false and I may be something more along the lines of ‘way at the back’. Oh well.

Sunday afternoon I met up with FKR, Shawn, John Bon Benson, and Precious down in sedona partway through their shred. We hit up another couple hours of riding after I met up with them and had a good time generally shredding down there.

I think today may be a day off, but then again, I’ve said that before, and it didn’t work then either.