Weekend Update

I know it's Tuesday but this is the first chance I've had to write in awhile. Ski patrol 5 nights a week is taking it's toll. This past weekend was my big Senior Hill test at Crystal Mountain. That meant lots of stress, lots of driving, and little sleep. I woke up at 5:00a.m on Saturday and left for Crystal at 6a.m. As soon as I got to Crystal it started snowing and it snowed hard all day. The skiing was great. Saturday we had a mogul clinic where we got to practice taking the toboggan and patient down the hill through the moguls. This was hard work but a lot of fun. We also had a lot of time to just screw around and ski for free at Crystal so it was a good time. 

I stayed up in TC on Saturday night to save a little money so I left Crystal about 4:00p.m. On my drive through TC I stopped at Mt. Holiday to take a few ski runs and patrol for two hours. I don't know why I needed to go ski at Holiday after a full day of skiing at Crystal but what the heck. I got out to the house about 8:30, plowed the driveway and laid on the couch before going to bed. 

Sunday morning I woke up again at 5:00a.m. and drove back down to Crystal for the actual Senior test. My first two runs were horrible and were not passing runs. Thankfully they gave me a chance to re-run the bad runs and I was able to calm down my nerves and get back on track. It was a long day that was both physically and mentally challenging. After waiting for about an hour back in the lodge the coordinator of the program came back in and announced that I along with four others in the room passed our Senior Hill test. 

A big relief was taken off my shoulders but it's a two part test and I still have the medical portion of the test left. Sunday March 8th is my last test and I get more and more nervous each day. The celebration of passing the hill test lasted for about a day and then last night we were back out on the hill practicing our back-boarding and various medical scenarios. 

As nice as it will be to be done with all this testing, I'm not sure what I'm going to do come April when I can't ski. Skiing this year has taken up more of my life than ever before. The season is almost done but there is still lots of skiing to be had. This weekend I'm headed up to TC for a weekend at Mt. Holiday, Monday it's back to Cannonsburg and then Tuesday through Thursday Erika and I are going up to Marquette Mountain for a mini ski vacation. (We can't afford to go out west :(  We'll come back, and hopefully have another two to three weekends of spring skiing, let's hope it sticks around for a bit. 

On a side note: Erika had her basic hill test Sunday morning too and she passed. Unfortunately I couldn't make it but she is now a basic alpine patroller for the National Ski Patrol. Yay!