Cross-country skiing!

Saturday January 1
What a glorious day to see in the New Year! We awoke to clear blue skies and bright sunshine. After our experience the other day getting up to Solitude, we left plenty of time for getting up there for our cross-country skiing lessons. We knew the roads were clear of snow, but it was a Saturday and a holiday, so we were expecting it to be busy. Much to our surprise, there was no hold-up whatsoever, and we arrived at the center almost an hour early. There were only a couple of cars in the Nordic Center car park and only one couple in the office. Roger and I were totally new to cross country skiing, so we were doing “classic” skiing, whereas Jen had already tried classic cross-country ski, so she was going to try “skate” skiing. There were two instructors, and they didn’t have anyone else at that time, so they took us early, which was great - Roger and I with one instructor and Jen with the other one. I was quite pleased with how I got on, the only time I fell, was near the beginning, when he asked us to deliberately fall, so we could practice getting up! As you can see from my collage it was sooo beautiful, with the fresh heavy snowfall on the trees, pristine snow, and blue skies overhead. The peace was occasionally disturbed by a distant boom, when our instructor explained they were letting off charges in the back country to try and minimize the avalanche risk. We had an hours lesson, just taking it gently around the loop. When our lesson was finished, we were able to keep the rental equipment as long as we wanted and practice more on our own, so we continued for almost another hour, by which time my thighs were beginning to complain, so we called it a day. The thumbnail picture of Roger and I was kindly taken by our instructor, the rest by me.