Ski Touring and the Chronicles of my Left Knee

Hello Out There.

A week ago I was going to go ski with Jon from work. I had no one to ski tour with Saturday, and he was kind enough to be like, "You know what, let's go do McGee". Wee in the AM Saturday, Jon calls, and says something like, "Please forgive me, but I can't move my legs, I have to cancel".  Jon does insane things in tight spandex and when he's not doing the so-called "Rando Races", he is still doing crazy things. I'm just flattered he was willing to go with me.

I ended up just going out my front door to the Sherwins. Simple and when by yourself, sticking to trees is great, especially for someone like me with minimal avalanche training.  I still took my beacon, but there was not a soul in sight, until the parking lot at 12:30 when I finished.

The "Tele Bowls"- my line is there somewhere

I could see through the trees to White Mountain

View from one spot on my skin up

Sad Chair: "No One Would Ski With Me"

So needless to say, little did I know that I won't probably get to ski with Jon at ALL this spring.  I then traveled up to Shasta City/Weed, CA home of Mount Shasta to visit with my friend, that many of you know as Wolf, who moved to CA from CO this past year.

I have not seen Wolf in 6 years! He's not a social networking fan, so we debated, and decided we'd go into meeting up with a vague idea of what we may look like (the same) 6 years later.  I stayed Wednesday night in South Lake Tahoe area after going to a fun Yonder Mountain String Band show with some friends from Mammoth.  It made my drive about 4 hours instead of 6 ish. 

Driving through the pines near Lassen made me miss Maine and the NEK and biking nice damp soil. It was beautiful.  It was all so beautiful, that on Friday when I got my FREE ticket to Mount Shasta Ski Park (where Wolf works)  that well... let's just say it was a short ski day.  All my hopes and dreams of skiing there one days and then doing a BC tour the next day,  whomp, crash bang, gone.  My mind and body weren't working together and I was nervous to tele in front of him, and I was being a gaper.  "Wow, look at Mt. Shasta right there." and I just wiped out and kind of rolled, and got up and realized that it didn't feel too great anymore.

I go for an MRI on Thursday. It's the same knee I had 8 stitches on from a stupid bike crash this summer. Let's hope it really isn't my ACL...  and that I'm done with injuries for a while. Yay, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont for continuing my coverage!

So here's to skiing next year, here's to knee joints, and hopefully being able to do a Century or two this summer, and backpack A LOT, and bike the Tahoe Rim Trail, and get home to see my people, and and and...if I were in VT my ski season would be over anyway, but in a different way. So much snowpack here. God! I have to go to bed. I do not want to think about it anymore.

Peace.

My Backseat Driver

View from bedroom window of Shasta in the clouds

1st of 3 of the McCloud River Falls that we hiked to at dusk, when I shouldn't have been gimping... errr... hiking

Wolf took me to the Mt. Shasta Ski Park End of Season Ski Movie at the Weed Brewery. And you thought you'd get to see a picture of him. haha.Yes, there was an Instructobot, and Zombie attacks in the movie.

I went for a mini hike-when I probably shouldn't have... Near Shastina Lake.View of Shasta.

Castle Lake and it's ski terrain.

Lookers Right at Castle Lake, a bit of overlap from above

Can't a girl wear camo muck boots, a skirt, and plaid?  Back part of Shastina Lake