This is what happens when you don’t bother to check the forecast.

Saturday was probably my last ski day of this season, if not ever, and conditions were less than ideal. In fact, it sucked so badly that I tried to document the deep suckitude so that Magda would believe that my day of skiing had been worse than her day of howler-monkey custodianship. But Magda has such a severe aversion to my stupid phone that the most reliable way of getting her to see any pictures I take with its wretched little camera is to painstakingly extract them and post them here:

Note: for comparison, one of these pictures was taken on a different day.

These pictures begin to convey how strangely socked-in Krvavec was. After a few runs of utter cursing and freaking out at the lack of visibility, I began to get into a zone of quiet hallucination. Having no visual cues meant skiing only through feeling. Since I couldn’t see where I was going or use my eyes to gauge my speed, I had no choice but to listen to my body: increasing pressure on ball of foot or little toe, unreliable inner-ear paraphernalia, cerebellum feedback. The gravity began doing strange things. It was hard to tell when you had actually stopped. It was surreal, scary, and strangely exhilarating to ski so close to the edge of blindness. After some getting used to it, I found it oddly productive to have to pay such close attention to information coming from anywhere but my eyes. Not the best day of skiing ever, but certainly interesting and memorable.

Maybe my day was better than Magda’s after all.