a new record

view on the way out
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A new personal record for the most amount of runs achieved in the zone, 9 very long, technical and awesome runs.  I can feel every individual muscle in each leg and am walking like a cripple, but a happy one.

Today we started out at Danoz for 2 warm up runs before moving onto Cupcake for a couple and then Sparkles for a few more before finally making it back to Danoz for 2 more. We skied every type of snow that the Chugach can provide today, from icy hard pack to powder, to lumpy avalanche scree to soft almost watery spring corn.  The whole day was pretty mellow, we had quite a bit of time to rest between stops and after about run 6 when someone mentioned margharitas i was really looking forward to putting my feet up. At the end of the day we went back up to do our second run on the spring snow, i was pretty relaxed for a change and ready to push off down for the last run of the day exactly the same as what we did before but they made me go first.

9 runs and counting

sparkles
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i really hate going first, partly because you never really know where the hell you should be going and secondly because you feel like the unlukiest lab rat in the biggest, badest and nastiest maze you could ever find yourself in.  I managed to ski straight down the steepest part of the slope only to be locked in between 2 avalanched slopes either side of me.  I had a turning space of about 10 metres, i pulled up short only to find the next one in my group right behind me and set off a new slab right above me, so i am trying to figure out how to get me out of this mess when the groupie suddenly screams at me "GO JANE GO GO GO!!!".   Well there goes my nice little mellow relaxing run to finish off the day - now i am not only dying of thirst for my margharita but i need about 6 shots of tequila lined up after it just to calm the f*ck down!

did somebody say "margharitas"?
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So i may be a little melodramatic about it out here because in the end i made it down OK, and i have started to think that i might have a smidgen of style (just not quite grace or elegance yet) i looked back up at some of my tracks today and i put in some beautiful symetrical and smooth turns up of the Chugach.  My body is looking forward to a rest with a down day but it does not look at though i am out of it yet, today is looking to be as good as the last 2.  As a friend said tonight, "You can rest when you get home".