Icing on the Park City cake!

Last Sunday afternoon, I skied – I should say ice-skated, most of the Park City Mountain ski runs, with my daughter and we were lucky on many counts. Not to hit a tree, fall and slide without ever stopping as we glided, most of the time on sheer ice. 

Think of it as “on a wing and a prayer!” Something so bad I never experienced in 72 ski seasons, the world over from Australia to Zermatt! 

That should say a lot. Blue ice was visible in numerous spots and everywhere, including on bumps, everything was smooth, but super hard, the kind of material never letting the edges bite. 

Only on flat sections had the traffic abraded snow enough to turn it into some kind of semolina, making “skating” more pleasant. 

Since the combination of noise and vibrations was extremely unnerving, we did our very best to be “brief” and not linger on the harder spots, which gave anyone who watched us the very false impression that we were quite “at ease” on this forsaken terrain. 

Anecdotally, I’ve always thought and said that skiing on ice demanded brevity and I stand by that principle! In fact, we were just terrified and rushing to put an end to our descents. This said, we stuck on the mountain till closing time and tried everything that was available to find better spots, but they weren’t available. 

At the day’s conclusion, we felt good like the survivors we had become...