Catch-Up

Forgive me for my extended period away from Pure Royalty, all I can say is I have been occupied with other endeavors such as portuguese and physical science classes, Pinterest, my dinner group, trying to normalize my tan lines (that Brazil sun has a way of emblazoning its indelible mark) and culinary creations in my own kitchen.

Despite all those distractions, I did actually write a post from a couple weeks ago, and I wanted to post it here, even though it's outdated, because I really like it.

Thirteen Inches and almost May!!! 

My first Saturday in Provo and we awoke to a blanket of white. Sheb and I had planned on taking advantage of the remaining snow by hitting up the Bird that Saturday, but with such a quantity of fresh pow-pow, even with a hurt back, Tay couldn't resist, so we all headed up, with Sheb's TELOS boys in tow, to see what delights the Bird had in store for us. We suited up, along with what seemed like thousands of other Utahns, and made our way to Peruvian. JHam met us up there too, which was a treat for me, him being an original member of our epic ski crew, effectively disbanded when Chan and I left on our missions. As a crew, we have had some of the most mindblowing runs you could ever imagine, and getting to ski with him again was a hearkening back to treasured memories. We rode Peruvian up and hiked through the tunnel to Mineral Basin, where I immediately took off into the powder. The endorphins immediately started flowing as I bounced like a small rabbit through the fluffy powder. I always try to express the sensation it is to make turns in fresh Utah powder, but the reality seems to elude me, as words do not capture the penetrating stoke. It's satisfaction. It's like driving a race car and simultaneously like being on a calm lake. It's feeling that connection between your pole plants and your turns, and feeling that strength pulse through your legs with each turn, and then the anticipation of not quite knowing what that next ridge might bring. In my case, as I turned gracefully down the face on the Baldy side, that turned out to be an unseen lip that I dropped off, landing with all my force on my upper rib cage, and having the breath knocked out of me for a second. I dropped suddenly down from my powder section onto a cat track of hard, groomed snow, my bindings ejected me immediately and I was catapulted with all my accumulated velocity onto my left ribs. I'm still suffering from that. But we moved on, and skiied some amazing runs on Little Cloud, with short lift lines, and epic snow. Sheb also suffered a dislocated knee going down the hill with one of her boys who had started vomiting. And one of the boys also got away from the group for a few hours, so all in all, it was an interesting day, with more than a few casualties along the way. But who would've thought we would be skiing on thirteen inches of fresh powder the last weekend of April. That brings my season total to four days on the mountain, and three of those were epic powder days. I pay tribute to the Bird.