Oh fluffy powder!

Devon and I went to Timberline Lodge on Mt Hood to take the third and final lesson of our snowboard lesson package. My friends Chris and Espy came up from San Jose to hang out and go snowboarding for their first time ever. Dev and I warmed up for about an hour on the bunny slope while Chris and Espy took their lesson.

Snow kept falling from the sky. The wind kept throwing loose snow into our faces. And the sun occasionally peeked through the clouds. And the cycle repeated over and over all day long. This cycle deposited a ton of fluffy white soft powdery snow on the runs.

Dev and I managed to wrangle our instructor (he goes by "DC") from a few weeks ago into teaching our last lesson. Since only we two registered for the advanced beginner lesson, it was like we were getting a private snowboard lesson. He's a great instructor. Completely psyched about snowboarding. Completely psyched to be out teaching people to snowboard. Positive. Upbeat. Flexible. And he really pays attention. (Can you tell that Dev and I enjoyed his teaching style?)

He took us down the bunny slope one more time to evaluate our riding. Then he took us down the Pucci run. Our first time on a long open run. We got to do some straight downhill riding. We got to practice heel edge riding. We got to practice impromptu braking (crashing). But the soft powdery snow was fun to fall into. We even had to practice our balance on a level section on West End Road. DC had us strap in only one foot and practice placing our weight on that foot and balancing over that foot. Then we pushed off with our free foot and had to stomp our free foot on the board as many times as we could before falling. This exercise really worked at focusing our balance and body position - the practice graphically illustrated how we should be standing and balancing.

So we look forward to getting back up to the mountain. Dev has to travel this week and next week so we probably won't go back for at least two weeks. But we are chomping at the bit to get back up there.