This past weekend, Meg & I headed up to Gudauri to get some skiing/snowboarding in and just to get away from the city for a few days. We stayed in a really nice hotel, that included two meals apiece for pretty cheap.
The lift was a 5 minute walk from the hotel and the powder was awesome. This was the first weekend Gudauri had been open and they had about 2-3 feet of powder that had generally been untouched except for a few "groomed" areas. Saturday was spent getting my board back under my feet and playing in the powder with a few USAID guys I bumped into on the mountain. Sunday I put on the new splitboard got a few turns in with that, then split it apart and hiked up a bit. It's reasonably easy to take the board apart and make it into skinable skis, and I'm sure with more practice I'll get faster.
Once I got accustomed to the new board, it proved its value. Despite the split down the middle, the board does its job and keeps me on top of the powder MUCH better than my shorter resort board. In bounds the board doesn't respond as well, but a good portion of that is probably due to the fact that it's longer and I've pushed my center of gravity way towards the back for the powder. Skinning isn't exactly as fun as riding down hill, but it's certainly easier than hiking and being able to access untouched powder in the future will be great. That said, on Sunday we didn't need the skins to get to the powder, as they opened up the high lift and the steep, deep untouched snow was awesome.
Meg rented a pair of skis (for 30 Lari! Less than $20!) and skied the easy slopes for a while and felt pretty good about it. This place is a little over 90 minutes from home and will be a great place for most of the winter.
Here's a shot of the high lift, there are more shots on flickr that you can find by clicking on the flickr badge to the right.
Monday, December 24, 2007
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1 comment:
What a beautiful, colorful picture!!
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