I went in a group with Mike, Martynas, Adrian and Jonas H. Adrian got his new ski boots last week and had only tried skiing once for about 10 minutes outside. So this day was pretty much his first time skiing. We had to teach him how to snow plow to go down the hill, but the poor thing kept falling while he was standing in place and going down the hill was even worse.
Once we got down to the bottom of the first hill, I noticed Adrian was wearing knit gloves, not waterproof at all. I asked him about it and he said he didn’t own any, but from his falls his gloves were absolutely soaked and it was pretty cold outside so his fingers were pretty numb. Luckily I packed my waterproof ski mitts in my day pack so I lent them to him for the rest of the trip. I’m glad I took your advice from class and bought a pair because you were right, “You never know when you’re going to need a spare pair of gloves”. It was the day after the lecture where you talked about climbing in the Rocky Mountains and one of your friends dropped his gloves and didn’t tell you till the next morning when he started getting frostbite. I stopped Adrian and told him that he should have let us known that his fingers were numb and that he had bad gloves.
It was really slow going, but that was also kind of nice because it allowed us to focus on technique and it kept our energy levels high. About half way through I stopped going downhill in the ski tracks because half of the time I would hit an ice clump and crash, or it would be too steep of a curve and couldn’t turn properly and I would crash. Around noon we decided to have a lunch break and went off track up a huge hill with untouched snow. 
It was really beautiful, but the snow was really deep and covered everything. When we took off our skis we sunk down to our knees and that’s when I discovered how helpful gaiters really were. I didn’t have any but Martynas did and no problem in the snow. I had an inner lining in my ski pants that tightened around my boot, but when going knee-deep in the snow it really shoved my pants legs up and my shoes got invaded by snow.
We opted not to bring firewood with us since in one of the previous days we learned tips on how to make fire in the snow. I had a really handy collapsible bag with me and we went trapezing through the sparsely treed area searching for birch trees that we could strip of dry bark. We got a decent amount and also found a few dead branches sticking out of the snow that we could use. We uncovered a rocky cropping where we decided to make our fire at and cleaned a pit to place the fire in. With my handy-dandy lighter we got the fire blazing in jiffy. We were super happy that we were able to start a fire in the snow just by using the nature around us (besides my lighter). 
The fire was burning really well at first and we were able to cook our hotdogs on them. Jonas brought lomper to eat them on, which I had never heard of before. I tried it and it was pretty great, I have a lot of ideas on how I could incorporate them into future meals now. After awhile of cooking, I took my gloves off and put them on sticks I held over the fire to dry them….well they got a little too dry. One of my gloves melted around the wrist area and showed the warm cotton-like material underneath, which was a real bummer. It took a while though to get it going and keeping like that and eventually we had problems with airflow as our pit sunk pretty far in the ground. We kept it going barely long enough to finish cooking our last hotdog. Next time we make a fire in the snow, I know now to at least dig out a channel for air to flow in underneath. The whole process took about 2-2.5 hours, which was a bit long for all of us and our feet were getting pretty cold by then.
By the time we got moving again it was pretty late in the afternoon and we turned around when we got near the upside down boat. The boys wanted to climb up a large area of the mountainside and ski down but Adrian and I were pretty ready to be done for the day and we were slower than the others so we decided to just start heading back early. I only fell once on the way back, which was on a really really really long downhill ski section and even though it wasn’t super steep I still gained too much speed in the ski tracks and couldn’t make a turn. I really need to learn how to step out of them.
The rest of my group caught up by then and Jonas said he knew a “shortcut” back so we listened and followed him…and it ended up being really difficult to navigate through on skis. We crossed the lake (which was really awesome!) and went up onto what must have been a horse or bike path because it was really narrow and really steep in some sections. We had to cross a highly inclined wooden bridge that was really slick with snow/ice and too narrow for our skis. It was a pain in the ass! But felt very good once we got passed it. I ended up running out of water by the time we got near the end and it made me realize that I should start bringing my thermos and filling it with water too for backup.
All in all it was a really fun and satisfying day. I became better at skiing downhill (outside of the ski-tracks, not so much in them) and was able to play a big role in making our fire. It was a great feeling to apply what you taught us the other day in regards to the type of wood and the amount and see it work, but not so much to see my gloves get melted. I guess I know to better watch my clothing if I want to try and use a fire to dry them. The day trip was a nice way to get to know my classmates better too as I hadn’t really spoken to some of them much before. I’ll definitely be looking forward to our next trip.