Ten weeks since surgery (can now resume normal activity) + 10 degrees fahrenheit + 10,000 feet elevation (Alta) + 22 inches of new snow from the storm (19 of it since yesterday) + 100 inches of new snow in the last ten days = An incredible day for a return to skiing with Brian!!!
Nothing beats the feeling of your body vibrating from the explosive charges on the mountain from avalanche control--while you are inside the car in the parking lot at the base! Lots of the white stuff up there.
We'd been watching the storm tracks and eagerly totaling the new snowfall. What we got today was light, fluffy, Wasatch powder at it's best. There were some areas that had been closed off during the storm and were untouched. We found untracked powder all day long, finishing in the trees in the afternoon.
We even returned to the place of the collision that radically altered the trajectory of my ski season this year. Brian wondered if we dared go on the same chair, same run (third of the day), same location as when I was injured, but we passed through it without incident--just floating by on the powder.
I stopped in to the medical clinic there on the mountain at Alta to tell them thanks for taking care of me back in January and letting them know I was back on the mountain after carefully and precisely following the instructions of my craniofacial surgeon for convalescence (take note of it Dr. Birgfeld!). He remembered that I was a dentist and was up with another dentist (my brother-in-law Scott) and my sister held the IV bag as we drove down to the trauma center.
I even bought a new Alta t-shirt today to celebrate the occasion of my return to the mountains. In addition to the Alta logo on the front it says on back:
"Confidence: The feeling you have before you really understand the situation."
That pretty well sums it up.
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