Weekend Update

Hello friends! Hope you all had a good weekend :) Ours was busy....another fun supper club, Saturday dinner with friends, watching football with cousin. Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures of any of that. You will have to be satisfied with more pics of Willow playing in the snow and of our first backcountry ski day!

First, Willow in the snow at the dog park. Our dog park is awesome. It's right down the street from our house and has tons of trails for walking Will off leash. Most of these were taken with the iphone...It has been super cold here so I didn't take my new camera (I usually have to take my gloves of to use it and my cool running gloves have a special iphone thing on them).

The creek was frozen over, but that didn't stop the puppies from crossing :)

"Can you throw me that snowball you're holding? Please? Put that phone away!"

"What are you looking at? I SAID, put the phone away."

My new bindings finally came in the mail last week, so I had them mounted in time to use all my new stuff this weekend! Check out those sweet stickers on my skis :)

Saturday, after spending lots of time researching using both a backcountry ski book (me) and map (Matt), we headed our for our first adventure. I brought my old camera because Matt told me my new one would be too heavy (I'm taking it next time now that I know what it's like out there).

The parking lot was almost full - we were lucky to get the last spot!

We took Willow. She loved burying her face in the deep snow...

And alternated between wanting to follow Matt and take the lead.

It was snowy! Yipee!

We started on this trail.

Then realized after a few miles that it was pretty flat and wouldn't offer much good skiing. We consulted the map again and decided to follow a different route.

It was about 18 degrees up there and I wasn't wearing a jacket. Going touring is a great workout! I also realize I am wearing sunglasses and suspenders. It doesn't look sunny, but it was bright out there. I have no excuse for the suspenders...I'm on the hunt for new ski pants.

We got on the right track (headed more uphill) and had some great skiing down after skinning a few more hours (yes, hours). Next time, we won't have to go 4 miles out of the way and will hopefully have a quicker trip. ALSO I'm hoping next time we will turn before we reach the creek bed (which we had to HIKE out of in our boots). I'll spare you the details of my temper tantrum because I'm sure Matt doesn't want to relive it.

I didn't get any downhill pics because I was spending all my energy trying to keep up with Matt. Plus, Willow barked every time we stopped so we didn't take many breaks to get out the camera! At some point I'll try to take my new camera on our trip to give you a better idea of what the trails and skiing really look like....but it was awesome!

Oh yea, I got a haircut. I took this to send to Meg, but I'll share with you as well :)

It's going to be -3 degrees tonight. The high tomorrow is 9 degrees. Wish me luck on my morning run (it might be time to break out the credit card and order a balaclava for real).