The joys of cross-country skiing!
Christine's dad came to visit us in Portland for a belated Christmas get-together over the last few days and we had a great time while he was here. On Tuesday, we decided to go cross-country skiing at Trillium Lake near Mount Hood. The weather on Monday had been beautiful and we were hoping for a similar day for our excursion. This wasn't to be, as the day was a typical Portland leaden winter sky, and we even had rain as we set out. Fortunately, the rain turned to snow the higher up we got, and Trillium Lake turned out to be a winter paradise with lots and lots of thick white snow, with more falling all the time.
We strapped on our cross-country skis (which are longer and narrower than downhill skis), got rugged up and headed off to do a loop around the lake. The section from the car park to the actual loop was a very steep downhill slope and I had a very rough introduction: I fell over multiple times, finding out that the worst part isn't the falling, it's getting back up again! Not easy with 6-foot planks of wood strapped to your feet!
Once on the relatively flat track around the lake, I improved quite a lot, although I still wouldn't claim I had anything resembling a "technique". Kim and Christine often zoomed out of sight ahead, while Russ had a few problems with his older skis sticking, meaning he often brought up the rear.
The scenery - snow covered pine trees covering the mountainside - bordered on the surreal, all blinding white and contrasting black. Christine's yellow jacket certainly stood out! The lake itself was completely iced over and covered in a blanket of snow, and there was no hint of the famous view of Mount Hood for which the lake is renowned: in fact, it was difficult to determine where the land ended and the sky began!
We headed back to the car park, but the loop was longer than we thought (5 miles instead of 3) and we were all pretty beat by the time we finally hiked back up the big hill. The car had been covered with a good few inches of snow while we had been gone and we entertained ourselves by making a big snowman in the car park while we waited for Russ. A big burger and hot chocolate at Calamity Jane's Burger House on the way back to Portland made us all feel a lot better and warmer!
Posted in: chaosboy, sport, united states on January 10, 2008 at at 7:25:00 PM
Ah, yes. A wonderful day it was, but a little EZ Glide would've done the trick. Nonetheless, it was beautiful and so good to be back out west XC skiing.