This is a bit out of order. But i’m finally home and have access to the shots from our Christmas day ski. My cousin and her husband came up to VT from VA for a skiing holiday. Unfortunately for them, we had a big warm up and the snow conditions were less than optimal.
But these folks are tough and fit and I wasn’t about to let them come all the way up here without a quality outing. Off we went to the Waterbury Resevoir where we embarked on a 4 hour tour.

The temperature was pleasant. The sun was pale and soft in the sky. The trails largely untracked and the snow mostly crap. We had a tough, steep climb followed by a less steep slog. The lead person had quite a job laying tracks and the fun of the whole thing was compounded by numerous open water bars. 

Finally, after a couple of hours we made it to the ‘road.’ For some reason, no snowmobiles had been by recently which meant that the snow was SOLID. Rock hard. I’m not a good skier. It’s fine on anything that goes up or stays flat, but if i start descending i’m a mess. No idea why. I skied downhill very proficiently for 12 years. I snowboard well. I like snow. Just can’t do the downhills on cross country skis. Anyway, this is where we started going downhill and I started to go down.

We took a turn that I was familiar with and cruised down a wide open fire road. All was well and good until we discovered that the bridge was out. This led to an amusing stream crossing. When we finally skied up to the car, 4 hours after starting out, we were all happy to be done. And I was pretty stoked that I managed to tucker those guys out and give them way more of a ski than they were expecting.