After an initial day to get settled a bit, I like to start training on my Regular stance (left foot leading). It's been around 5 years since I last visited Keystone but I left with very fond memories, as well as a bruised hip bone. I've had my confidence broken here at Keystone, where it took several days to recover... but here I am, back at it. All my boards are better equipped to handle icy runs thanks to recent technological advances but I can't shake the memory of the spills that shook me up a while back.
I've grown a lot as a rider over the past few years tackling steeper and steeper terrain, but in order to get here, I spent a lot of time in uneven/bumpy terrain working on my turns. It is at Keystone that I became a mogul fanatic... they're everywhere. It's hard to go down the mountain and not see a large patch of moguls. Shortly into my first run, there they are.
Moguls are a great warmup for maneuvering in the trees and I just so happened to find a forest off of Spring Dipper to be my early season stomping ground. The first run in was a bit rough because I was cruising through a little too fast for exploring unknown terrain safely. I ended up jumping over the first of two logs and landed on the one behind, but came out intact.
Next time around, back in the trees. I found an entry that has two logs in the path which were fun to jump over. Small jumps help my feet wake up so they're ready to maneuver *-* This next round was a lot smoother since I managed to avoid the parts of the trail littered with debris.
After a flurry of quick turns to loosen up the hips, knees, and ankles...
...I'm onto a bike trail that ends with a ramp; it seemed about a 10-12 foot drop that I almost landed!
Now that I'm all worked up and wanting to explore more wooded areas, I venture out to a different area and encounter a lot of exposed terrain as well as a hidden tree stump... a nearby skier pointed out the fact that its early season conditions, thanks for the reminder ^-^
I left that area and headed back to the infamous double logs that I spilled over on that earlier run... this time I got through it pretty smoothly and left feeling redeemed.
All that work starting taking it toll and it was time to head home. I decided to take the hardest route possible - The Edge: the only black diamond run available right now, littered, no doubt, with moguls... tons of them.
I'll almost definitely need a day off after charging this hard on day two... x_x
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