Dusk Patrol

I'm not sure why I didn't figure this out before now, but last night I finally realized that some of the best spring skiing/boarding does not happen during 5am Dawn Patrols. It happens during 5pm Dusk Patrols. With daylight savings, it's possible to get amazing in turns till after 8pm. However, by switching to dusk patrol, you do give up the following benefits that only dawn patrol can offer:

• Waking up at 4am.
• Getting addicted to caffeine so that you can stay awake at work.
• Spending your second (or third or forth) lap worrying about whether you'll miss your morning meeting.
• -10 degrees.
• Starting in the dark.
• Showing up and finding 4 feet of snow in the parking lot, making it impossible to park.

hmmm... dusk patrols are sounding better and better. The only downside is the minor detail of not seeing your kids all night. Unless, of course, you can bring your kid with you. Here are the father and son duo of Daren and Tanner in in action:

Next year Aubrie will be 6. With the way she's tearing up the resorts, I think she'll be ready to help me justify a lot more dusk patrols next year.

Adam and I were able to get an early start, so we headed up to Cardiff for a quick lap. Not sure why, but I always like the up photos as much as or more than the down. Especially when they're taken in daylight, which seldom happens during dawn patrols.

Heading up toward Cardiff's summit:

Superior looking... well... like a bad pun (as if there's such thing as a good one):

Adam ripping the down...

...but runs into some technical difficulties. Equipment failure. Yeah, that's it:

We met up with the Cottles and headed up Toledo Bowl, dropped down Holy Toledo, and then climbed back to Cardiff Peak. Rick, if you're still not convinced that the South side of Cardiff wasn't bulletproof, consider the following additional pieces of evidence:

Thanks to Mark for organizing Dusk Patrol last night. That really sucks about your meeting...