Ski Adventure, '07

Ben and I returned Saturday from our annual ski trip. We went to Beaver Creek, Colorado, for the third year in a row. We arrived on Sunday afternoon, got our shiny new bright red Rav4 from Hertz, and went to Christy Sports to pick up our rental skis, then to Walmart to stock the kitchen in our condo for the week. Monday morning, we got all bundled up and headed for the hills. Unfortunately, the guys at Christy had not fitted my boot to the skis, so I wasn't able to put the skis on. After a detour to the shop to have the problem corrected, we finally got started with our skiing. We thought it would be smart to start with a trail that we knew was very gentle, but it turned out that a few inches of new powder on a gentle trail causes it to become an exercise in pole-ing, that is, using the ski poles to propel oneself along an essentially flat surface. I got pretty frustrated and worn out very quickly, so I decided to point my skis downhill on a blue trail called "Corkscrew." Bad choice. It didn't look scary from the top, but around the corner it went spiraling into a glade of trees. I ended up scooting down most of it on my rear end, and Ben walked down it. Then we were even more worn out...and gun shy. We salvaged the day by going back to some green trails that were more downhill than the first one we tried but not restricted by trees! Monday night it snowed all night, so there was more fresh powder on the slopes. We went up to the top of the mountain and skied some terrific green runs that had been groomed recently enough to make them a lot of fun. After lunch, we decided to try out our new snowshoes that we got for Christmas (talk about strange things under the Christmas tree in Houston!). There's a large area at Beaver Creek set aside for snowshoes and cross-country skis, so we got to see some of the terrain that not everybody gets to see. We did find out that hiking uphill in snowshoes is great aerobic exercise and helps you get warmed up in a hurry!

You might notice that my hood and gloves were off by this point in the hike.

Here's a view from the deck of our condo on a clear day:


And here's what it looked like Wednesday morning:

We were pretty sore by Wednesday morning, and given the whiteout conditions, we chose to forego the skiing for one day. Instead we enjoyed sipping hot cocoa and sitting by the fire in the condo, and we drove up to the resort village to shop for souvenirs. The weather got colder as the week went on; by Thursday when we headed up to the top of the mountain, it was pretty windy. When we went into the mid-mountain lodge to warm up a bit, we saw the following infomation posted:

After that, we did the rest of our skiing lower down the mountain! On Friday we spent some time getting familiar with some different green trails and put on our snowshoes for one last hike---but this time we took a downhill trail to the bottom of the mountain. And every day, after freezing our bodies on the hills, we walked across the street from our condo to the Avon Recreation Center, where we soaked in some therapeutic hot tub bubbles:
When we got home Satuday afternoon, Ginger met us at the door. She had spent the week at a kennel, and I had arranged for her to have a bath before coming home. Tim picked her up for us and brought her home. She even had a little pink bow in her hair!