Fun & Fitness over 50

Thank you Belleayre for being open. Thank you for $20 lift tickets.
Thank you for great snow and grooming!

The snow condition report on their web page said packed powder.
Yeah, right! After 2 days of steady rain? How do you get powder out of that?
But they were telling the truth! Conditions were fantastic, just like they said, like mid-winter.
Brian and I were finally able to link up for a ski day and I am really glad for how it turned out.
Uncrowded all through the day, there were only 26 out of 55 trails open but that was more than enough.
We found untracked freshies at 11AM and practically first tracks on some of the groomed trails. A lot of the trails were even better than packed powder. There was just powder not deep but powder none the less.
We rode their High Speed Quad - "Super Chief" all day so we got a lot of runs in.
It was a gorgeous, blue-bird day up until lunch time, then it started to cloud over.
The east side of the mountain was open over to "Yahoo" trail. Beyond that was "Area 51", a terrain park. I guess it was supposed to be closed but somebody had taken the ropes and the closed sign down. That's where all the fresh powder was. We did several great runs down that. We just stayed off the terrain park features. Further west beyond "Area 51" was "Algonquin". That was a nice groomer which I suppose was supposed to be closed too. Maybe that's why we got first tracks on it. ;-)
After lunch we got one more run on Area 51 and then they put the ropes back up but left the way to Algonquin open.
The easternmost edge of the mountain got really mushy later in the day but the west part was beautiful even when we quit at 2PM.
I skied some black diamonds, not very gracefully, but I did it so I'm pretty happy about that. Gettin' there. I did have a mild spill on one, Wanatuska, on the last run of the day, that notorious "one more run!" ;-)
This was possibly my last day of skiing this season, but if it is, I've never had such a good last day! Belleayre says they will be open at least through sunday april 10th. I have one more ski day next Thursday. It would be nice if I could find an affordable mountain still open by that time.
Thanks, Belleayre!
And a special thanks to Mrs. MTBMan1 who encouraged me to go even though it was her birthday and she had to work!
Here are some pics from the day:

Looking up Onondoga on a beautiful, blue-bird morning


















The view from Onondoga (east side)



















Brian, cruisin' down Area 51


















Yours truly!


















Looking up "Area 51".
It was virtually untracked powder when we first got there!


















Looking down "Area 51"