Today should have been a banner day. Somewhere between two to three feet of super dense snow opened up almost all of Jay including a lot of off map trees. The extremely dense snow skied better after it was tracked up and packed down rather than untracked.

While skiing my four runs today, I frequently thought to myself that the snow and skiing today at Jay was better than the “Powder Day” a few days earlier at Killington. I thought to myself how much I utterly despised the fact that I couldn’t enjoy it.

Today was not meant to be despite my deep desire to enjoy the storm’s bounty before the inevitable rain/thaw/freeze event began. Work had ran me ragged. I was exhausted, stressed out, and deeply fatigued. I managed to get up early and make it to the mountain for first chair, but I would have been better off staying in bed.

Feeling the fatigue from the first chair, I opted for a rare “warm up” run. I skied Haynes top to bottom non-stop on the best non-powder snow conditions I have ever experienced on that trail. I managed a pair of off map tree runs before making the decision to call it a day while riding the Bonnie.

I dropped into River where I found sensational packed powder. But I was stopping every ten turns to dig down deep for another shot of energy to make it a bit closer to the lodge. Four runs and done. Four times more driving time than skiing time. A waste of a ticket voucher. A waste of some of the best packed powder snow of the year.

This has happened before. But I never correctly attributed the cause of the problem. I assumed it was a physical problem, something wrong with my body. So I’ve spent the last year and a half visiting doctors, getting referred to specialists, getting tests done. What is wrong with my body? Why does it keep doing this?

But it isn’t anything wrong with my body. The problem is with the vehicle I took to get to this place. That vehicle seemed steady, I knew to expect some bumps every now and again but it never completely drained me. It put me in the location I wanted to be in and gave me opportunities for access that I didn’t have before. It used to always be worth the few stressful times of the year. Now everyday is a stressfest. Now it has crippled me.

Now that vehicle is out of control and going off the tracks and taking me with it. What use is being in this location if I can’t enjoy it? If I feel so drained that my body is breaking down? Only a serious illness or disease could be that crippling, right?

No. The last specialist I visited said how great the news was that it wasn’t something wrong with my body, that all the tests came back negative. But I was disappointed in hearing that. Disappointed! Wow. I’d rather have something severely wrong with my body than to come to the conclusions that I can no longer ignore.

Fuck this shit.