There's wind, and then there's WIND.

It had been windy all morning in the Parsenn Bowl at Winter Park – but it was fantastic (and I mean FANTASTIC) snow, so Tom and I were making as many runs as we could while there were few tracks laid.  They had also said it’d be windy later, so we knew our runs were numbered.  Little did we know, when the wind arrived, it would ARRIVE.

 

It was our 5^th or 6^th run and as we rode the long lift up to the bowl, it started to gust stronger and stronger.  As we got off the lift, I actually had to work to move forward and unload, as the wind was pushing me back into the chair lift.  Well, that was nothing.  We cut right so we could get to the open areas of the bowl and as soon as we got on the top run/catwalk, wind hit with such strength, it was a complete whiteout, totally disorienting and by far the strongest wind I’ve ever encountered in my life.  We’ve spent a great deal of time above treeline, but nothing compared to this.  It was a sustained wind of probably 60-70 mph.  When on skis/snowboard, which are meant to glide and move fast in the first place, it was hard to steer or turn at all. I struggled to see Tom, only 10 feet away.  He wanted to hunker down by the fence on the top run and hopefully wait it out, but I just wanted to get off the summit.  I was trying to follow the rope to my right (strung to keep skiers off of bare rocks below), but even visually following ropes/poles 10 feet away was almost impossible and I kept drifting towards it.   I made it past the end of the rope and cut down into the bowl, completely blind.  And something that I wasn’t aware of, when it’s a complete and TOTAL whiteout – your feet are obscured by snow and you have no visual frame of reference, everything is white – you have no idea if you are actually moving.  Hard to believe, but very true. 

 

There were a few random skiers trying to navigate down at the same time we were, but they were impossible to see unless you were 10 feet or less from them, which wasn’t an issue, since we were all inching along.  At one point, a ski patrol drove by on the top run pointing the way down to skiers and boarders who had become turned around. I eventually found a woman huddled next to a tree in a bit of a panicked state, and offered to help her down to the tree-line, since I knew which way to go.  We started to head down and a bit below the summit, the snow cleared for a few seconds and I spotted Tom, thank goodness.  He had literally gotten blown off the summit under the rope and was trying to navigate down as well.

 

After a few more disorienting minutes, we made the tree line, regrouped and headed down through the trees.  What an experience…