Feeling defeated

So I just went to Wachusett, central MA, for some night skiing. It’s my local mountain and I try to go 1-2x a week to learn and practice. I’ve taken 4 lessons and have done a lot of practice between each lesson. Up until today I was able to comfortably cruise down the 2 greens and work on getting comfortable with increasing my speed and trying to focus on good form. Last week I started warming up on the greens, spending time on Look Mom (a blue) and Ralph’s Run to practice, and then finish confident back on the greens.

Long story short, tonight the conditions were not what I’ve been used to. Granted I think we’ve been blessed with more natural snow and when it’s nice and soft it felt almost easy.

Today it felt super super hard packed and icy and just a light dusting of loose snow (barely). There were so many rock hard “scratches” carved in from people carving throughout the day as well as these mini speedbumps/waves that would trip me up.

I wiped out so many times and just felt I had no control.

So, one, clearly I still have lots to learn. But, two, what bothers me now is how these conditions, as a rookie, were far from what I predicted and changed my entire perspective on what I thought I could handle. I skied for 45 minutes and left because I didn’t want to get hurt. Now I’m paranoid that if I want to chance another trip, how on earth do I know if it’ll be like this again? Is this just the time the season is over? It was 50 degrees earlier today and the temp at the mountain when I was there was 35. I thought the snow would be slushy but not just a solid brick. But again, I know I’m a rookie and I don’t have the knowledge that someone with years of experience would have.

I figured a group called icecoast would be the best source of insight 😅

And advice or insight to help me avoid another night like this?