OK, I know February is a short month, but the speed at which it flew by this year took me by surprise.
The good news is that spring, hiking season, and sunshine are on the way (or they supposedly are. The nor’easters battering the east coast apparently didn’t get the memo.)
The bad news is that I had to hurry and write up my new experience for the month of February, which I barely fit in by the end of the month.
During the last week of the shortest month of the year, I experienced something I had only heard rumors of throughout my life as an outdoorsy person: skiing powder.
I’m talking about my second year of skiing out west, my first year being the 2016-2017 ski season. This time around, I journeyed to Salt Lake City, Utah for a week of eating, sleeping, and skiing – and that’s pretty much it.
I grew up skiing, but only in the icy, frigid world known as the East Coast, so I really only skied deep powder for the first time in Colorado at the end of 2017.
We’d trekked up high and stumbled upon the deep snow by accident. It was a stark contrast to the rest of the mountain, really, which was patchy and saw my skis catching roots and rocks left and right.
Here, it was different. Here, my skis wanted to sink.
So almost immediately after starting down the trail, I faceplanted and ate snow.
We didn’t ski that section of the mountain again until it was tracked over, so my taste of powder (pun intended) was short-lived.
The weekend we arrived in Salt Lake City, however, Utah had just received a present of fresh, white, cotton-candy snow, which I was terrified to ski in (see aforementioned faceplant incident.) Terrified, but also excited – the best combination of emotions, am I right?
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You might think this is cheating a little bit, calling my “new thing” for this month a trip that was planned weeks before I even came up with this challenge for myself.
I had genuinely never skied in Utah before, though, so I’m sticking to it. Making it down a powder run without sliding into a drift of deep snow, sticking, and falling sideways was also a big accomplishment. Yay for new things!
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve”shredded the gnar” in my day. Skied some “groomers,” as they say. Gotten fresh tracks on the “corduroy” (my boyfriend just taught me that one last week. Cue scene: Him: “Look, you can still see the corduroy on this trail!” Me (yelling from down the slope): “…What?” Him: “The corduroy!” Me: “The what??” This continues for 20 more seconds until he explains what corduroy means. End scene.)
Do I sound like a cool, hardcore skier yet? No? OK.
The moral of the story this month is that I tried skiing powder, I didn’t die, and I loved skiing in Utah. 10/10 would go back.
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There’s one more, arguably more significant item I added to my list of “Things I’ve Done” this past month: I left my first full-time job.
This was undoubtedly scarier than any steep powder run I could have encountered on the mountain. It was a good job, and the people were really nice, but it wasn’t my dream. And I was worried about falling into complacency if I stayed there.
So I left. With some plans formed, but nothing concrete for the next few weeks, and definitely nothing concrete once August rolls around, but I’m learning to be OK with that. Just another new thing to adjust to.
Oh, and I’m moving cities! Still an east coast girl, though. For now.
Until next month 💃 ⛷
