I drove up to Tahoe with Russell in the afternoon on Friday. We cruised up. No snow. No rain. No traffic. It was a blessing after the nightmare of last week.

When we got to the house, it was empty. The only person here was Russell's brother Justin, visiting from Vermont. It was strange. The house isn't always packed like last weekend, but there's usually a handful of people. Not yesterday. We made dinner (bison burgers and steam artichoke), watched a movie (Love and Death) and crashed.

Russell normally skis at Kirkwood, but since no one was here (Jake and Lindley did show up after midnight), he decided to come with me to Heavenly. It was going to be an epic day. It was sunny and we've had more than 7 feet of new snow in the last week. 7 fucking feet. This is just the season that will not quit.

Russell hadn't been to Heavenly in years, so I toured him around. We were having a great time on empty runs until we hit the cat track to the Nevada side and Russell started having problems with his feet. His orthotics weren't fitting right and they were jamming into the bottom of his feet. He was miserable.

So he headed down to get his boot situation fixed and we made a plan to meet at the gondola at 1 or if that didn't work out, in the bar at the California lodge at 4. I was bummed. We were having a great time, but if you can't ski, you can't ski. I guided Russell to the gondola and headed back to the California side. It was only about 10:15.

So I skied solo for the next couple of hours, cruising the perfect soft snow all over Nevada. Around 12:30 or so I headed back to midmountain where the gondola drops skiers off. I was early so I skied a few runs on the 6 person Tamarack lift. There's a little terrain park under the lift. I taking the short lift up and shooting down through the terrain park. There's tons of little jumps. It was fun as hell until I took off on one, got way back on my skis, almost landed on my ass, and when I tried to save it, I hyperextended my right knee. I could feel a tweak of pain in the knee. I got up. I wiped the snow off my glasses. I headed down and found Russell waiting for me at the little barbeque place outside the gondola.

He'd already eaten lunch and I wasn't all that hungry. I just needed to rest and stretch out my knee. I felt good enough to ski in about half an hour, but it never really felt right. I was tentative. No more jumping, no more hard carving turns. It wasn't that bad, but it was the worst skiing injury I've had since I fell and bit my lip when I was 14 or so.

We returned to the house around 4:30. I whipped up a blender full of banana daiquiris and washed that down with a few beers. By the time I hit the hot tub, I pretty numb. I couldn't feel anything let alone my knee.

I should be able to ski tomorrow, but we'll see.

Days Skied This Season: 17