Skiing in the Koots

With all the new snow we've been getting lately, I've been trying to get out and practice my skiing. The goal is to be actually able to ski through some of the backcountry terrain we have out here. A drive of 10-15 minutes from our place gets us higher up into the hills where the snow is soft and fluffy. The technique here is to put the skins on the skis and plod upwards for an hour or two and then ski back down. I've been looking for a cut block that I could try out and in the past couple of days have found two that were interesting. For the uninitiated, cut blocks are locations of recent logging where the challenge is to avoid stumps and old logs. The one I tried yesterday was covered with quite a pile of snow so I sort of fluffed my way downhill, traversing from side to side so I could control my speed and give myself time to figure out where I was going to go. My problem with skiing right now (one of them, at least) is that I can't translate a desire to turn my skis into actual reality quickly enough to avoid things in the way. Anyway, all the stumps and logs were covered with large piles of snow so I sort of skiied around and over them all the way to the bottom. Then it was 10 minutes down the logging road back to the car. Lots of fun! There was a pile of new snow last night and rain is forecast for Friday......