Water skiing in January

Yesterday was a day of a lot of firsts of skiing:

• first time I've ever seen a lifty use a squeegee (I didn't even know they had such a thing there!)
• first time I've ever seen water falling from the sky at the top of a mountain in January instead of the white fluffy stuff
  
• first time I wished I had had mini windshield wipers on my goggles
• first time my snow pants and ski coat have been soaked through
  
• first time I've had to wring out my ski gloves
• first time I seriously contemplated building a giant snow man in the middle of a run

Can you guess what was the cause of all this? Yep, rain. And lots of it. Despite the rainy conditions in the valley yesterday, we decided to go skiing anyway. We figured it would at least be snowing in mountains. And if not at the bottom of the mountains, it would for sure be snowing midway up. I have to admit, it was a little weird to be in my snow pants, carrying my ski stuff to the car when it was pouring rain outside. It was still pouring when we got to Deer Valley. Still hopeful, we strapped on our gear and headed up the mountain.



The snow was slow (anti-lock brakes!) and heavy, but quite entertaining. Perfect snowman snow. It was like skiing through mashed potatoes at the top of the mountain where it was STILL raining! And at the bottom it was literally water skiing. I've never seen anything like it in January.



And the rain made it hard to see--we needed goggle-wipers. So here's my plea: pray for SNOW!



Because the conditions weren't all that great, we made our own fun in snow. We even found our own personal hut.





After a few fun hours of being stubborn lovers of skiing, we were soaked through and getting cold. The temperature finally started to drop so the rain turned to slush. We became slush balls until we got to a lower elevation where we were just saturated spunges. For a die hard skier, it wasn't even close to a 10, but it was still fun.

If you'll look closely, you can see just how rain soaked we are. Hopefully it will be snowing the next time we go.