Snow Skiing

I was so excited to get up to the mountain and told my guide "let's go to the big mountain." We got over there and took the lift up and began our run. Let's just say with no vision I sucked royally. I was so upset with myself and couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. I could not make turns, I kept sliding backwards without realizing I was moving, and all in all I did awful. We decided to come back to the little mountain (as I call it) after lunch. One of the video guys that was video taping me for some analysis program they are doing came up to me and said he knew why I was having such trouble. The powder was fresh and creates a gliding sensation. I literally could not get a feel for my ground and orientation b/c I was gliding on this stuff. Great stuff to ski on if your sighted but horrible in my case. We went back to more familiar runs that I did the week before and I had to start working on techniques for handling the powder. I soon got the right idea and was figuring it out. I feel much better after this afternoon and finding out that mt skiing was so bad b/c of something else I wasn't familiar with helped. He let me do a few runs with my shades off so I could see and I basically ripped down them, but the key word is SIGHT really helps. Oh well I need to learn to figure out how to work with vision loss so I'm ready when it is gone.
My guide was telling me that the trouble he has with me is opposite what he has with other skiers b/c I can ski well with sight and when I turn on his commands they are very sharp turns. He's like "I can't believe I actually have to tell someone to turn less." I had fun teasing him by hockey stopping and spraying snow at him. I got him good a few times. Turning is hard while blind b/c I have no idea how much of a turn I have made. Without visual clues you have less sense of the turn amount. I would compensate by turning very sharp causing me to stop a lot. [sigh] I'll get the hang of it and hopefully the big mountain won't have fresh powder next time.