Wait. Ski? What the heck?

I know, I know. I don't ski. Well, I do ski, just not often or well. The problem is so many of my adventure buddies do ski I feel compelled to give it a shot.

This time it was with my neighbors and fellow NWAC volunteers. We spent the day talking to adventurers outside the visitor center at Mount Rainier National Park. While we couldn't tell people where they would be safe, we pointed them to the avalanche forecast, pointed to avalanches on the slopes of the Mountain, and gave away swag. A day well-spent, especially because the views from our "office" were spectacular.

When our shift was done and the NWAC gear safely stowed, we started skinning up the slope. On previous ski adventures, I found my feet were squeezed mercilessly in my boots and my thighs burned with the effort. The thighs were out of my immediate control, but I could solve the fit problem by taking out some of the padding in the boots. Oooh... roomy.

By the time we had climbed half way to our turnaround my feet were already aching. By the time I got to my turnaround, I was just about in tears. While Kirk and Tanner climbed higher to get a few extra turns, I sat in the snow and honestly considered taking off my boots to "ice" my feet. In the end, I feared I wouldn't be able to put the puts back on so I suffered. So much for my solution of skiing without insoles.

Suffering. We'd been talking about that earlier in the day. It's my big advantage over the kids. They will always be younger, likely be faster and stronger, but I'm willing to bleed for the adventure. Pain is just part of life in the mountains.

Not that I seek the suffering. I didn't turn straight down the slope like they did. I took a nice, mellow route that cut across the hill only slightly steeper than the climb up. That was plenty fast for me and I didn't crash at all! (At least not until I came to a stop at the end of the traverse and tried to turn down. Still... SUCCESS!)

I skied the rest of the way back to the parking lot alternating between feeling super studly as I glided past others and wishing I could sever my legs just below the knees. When I took off my skis I also took off my boots and walked to the car, through snow and puddles, in my socks.

With all my gear in the car, I climbed in and worked on breathing through the spasms and shooting pains. When we stopped for ice cream (a requirement, of course) I literally couldn't walk inside without aid. Thankfully, it got better over the next few hours. The more I walked normally the less it hurt. Three days later, it was more the surface blisters that bothered me than the deep, throbbing ache.

I have been avoiding my plastic mountaineering boots since climbing Mount Baker way back in 2011. At that time, they rubbed blisters into my ankles, but in retrospect, they weren't that bad. Now that I know how much a pair of boots can ruin a day I'll pay a little more attention to getting them sorted out. It can't be that hard, can it?