The snowboard trip was pretty good. The new gear worked well and was comfortable which is something you just can't know until you try it. That's a relief! My skills have definitely improved as I was able to do runs this year that I couldn't do last year. The snow level was pretty high and alot of the runs were not groomed recently so there were alot of moguls which are pretty tough for snowboarders, but I got better at them over the weekend and overall the trip was still fun. So as usual, some weird stuff happened to me while I was there.

While waiting in line for the lift, this random older couple ask me what size my boots are. I tell them 13. And they were so shocked by that. They were chuckling to themselves and seemed really amused by that for some reason like they had never seen someone with big feet before. I guess they didn't realize I was like 8 inches taller than them. Perhaps they had never met a tall person before. The man said, "Wow, you hardly need skis." Ha ha, very funny. Yeah my parents kinda wore that joke out when I was a teenager. They finally got it though when the lady said, "I guess that makes sense though since you're pretty tall." Yes it does.

The highlight of the trip was when a cloud descended and covered the peak of the mountain. So I thought it would be really cool to go up there and most of our group agreed except for the most experienced person. We should have listened to him, ha ha, but then if we did, we wouldn't have had this cool story to tell. Anyways, we get to the top and it is intense up there. Visibility was 10 feet and maybe 30 feet at best. The wind was fierce and blowing ice so that it felt like thousands of needles were flying into your face. So we made our way to the Cornice run. When we got there, I couldn't see past the edge. I couldn't tell how far it dropped. Was it a few feet or had the wind made a 30 foot snow cliff? What was once black diamond had now become extreme. I was about 10 feet from the edge pondering about whether I should do it or not. Then a guy passed me and came right up to the edge and just sat there looking over the side. So I'm thinking I'll see what this guy does. Then I look behind me and there are about 20 people there just waiting and probably thinking the same thing. One lady says to me, I'm waiting for you to try it. I think that's really funny because this is that classic scenario, "if your friends jumped off a cliff, would you jump off it too?" I guess the answer here would be yes except these aren't even your friends, they are complete strangers. How can someone with no knowledge of my skill trust that I will make the right decision, yet I was thinking the same thing about the guy in front of me who was still there sitting and looking over the edge. So we decided to turn back and take the easy run down. As soon as we start making our way back up the hill, someone says, "they're turning back!" and the whole crowd behind us starts turning around, ha ha. Just think, all those people would have probably followed us blindly if we had gone over the edge. We did the run a couple times the next day though and it was great. The wind was still pretty heavy though. I was trying to go over the edge and the wind kept blowing me over. Sometimes I would just be stuck pointed downhill but at a complete standstill because of the wind, but eventually gravity overcomes.