Park City Powder Day!

Utah is one of our regular ski stops every year, since Scott's parents have a timeshare in Park City. We were looking forward to staying for a little bit longer this year and spending time with the family.

Our first day was at Deer Valley, from which there are no pictures (?)...maybe we got distracted by the carrot cake and Deer Valley turkey chili which was delicious as always.  Deer Valley got 4 inches of snow overnight so we had a good time ripping around.

We took an off day the next day and spent some time at the Utah Olympic Park, including a museum dedicated to the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympics.

We're pretty much Olympians.

The next day was quite memorable. Park City received 9 inches of snow overnight and it was still snowing and blowing as we got on the Town Lift in the morning.  I met Gene, a Park City ski instructor and family friend, for our annual lesson, while Scott and his dad went powder hunting.  

Scott and Dave were lucky enough to get right behind ski patrol as they dropped the rope on the south side of the Pioneer ridge area.  Scott tells me this was one of his top 5 runs of his life, so it must have been pretty good.  They lapped the area all morning gloriously.

I think Dave enjoyed it too!

I had a great lesson with Gene and met up with everyone else at lunch time.  We all shared stories of our great mornings.  

Scott had a pretty cool ice beard!

In the afternoon, I got to hang with Scott and his dad at the Jupiter chair.  This was a pretty difficult zone for me, but the snow was great and we had lots of fun.  We even got to hike to Scott's Bowl (the real name of the run)!

After our hike to Scott's Bowl!

All in all, we had a great day at Park City, followed by a great dinner on Main St with the family!

Vail Powder Day

After a great day at Keystone we waited with anticipation for a full-blown powder day at Vail.  The resorts in Colorado received hits of snow almost every night we were there in the 1-3" range but Thursday night brought something in the 8-10" range to Vail and we were ready to get after it with an early morning start.

A quick warm up lap in the Game Creek area revealed deep, light snow and we quickly headed to the back bowls where it got deeeeper.  Now remember, Shannon started skiing three seasons ago and has sky-rocketed in skills; this was actually one of her first truly deep days complete with moments of glory and moments of deep snow struggle (literal and figurative).  Here she is in a moment of glory:

Pow!

We worked our way through the massive back bowl area in a looker's left-to-right configuration which worked out wonderfully.

It's surprising how quickly Vail can get cut-up, but the snow quality stays good all day and with a little bit of work we skied fantastic Pow all day long including a great Poma lap into Siberia bowl. This was our last ski day in Colorado and we went out with a bang.  Here's a view of one of the Back Bowls (specifically China Bowl).  Such amazing terrain.

The next day we headed out and had an uneventful drive back to Salt Lake City where we met my family for a week of skiing in Utah!

More Colorado Sunshine and Powder!

Colorado had already treated us fairly well, with two powder days at Vail and Breckenridge. Things continued positively for Scott and I with our next two days at Arapahoe Basin and Keystone, respectively.

We purposely planned to hit A-Basin on a bluebird day.  It was beautiful!  A-Basin is known for being a challenging, less-resorty type mountain. We liked it because it reminded us a little more of our home resort (Stevens). However, I have to say, I skied the hardest stuff I ever have here, including one run off the Pallavicini Chair! This place is steep, and doesn't make access to all their terrain super easy (traverses and hikes, etc.).

From the backside of A-Basin

This is one of Scott's favorite places to ski, so he was having a great time all over the place.  His highlights include: Pallavicini runs, backside runs, fast groomers, cornice drops, and taking his wife places that were scary. :)

This pretty much sums up our day/entire ski trip. :)

After the skiing, we took the short drive up to the top of Loveland Pass, which also happens to be the Continental Divide!  We did many crossovers of the Divide on our summer road trip, but never got a picture.  This time, we finally made it happen.

Gotta stay west of that divide. :)

Colorado is crazy, everybody.  There are SO many ski resorts close together. You wake up in the morning and take your pick.  The next day's choice took us to Keystone.  We were particularly excited to do Keystone because my friend from Seattle, Jess, and her boyfriend, Andy were going to meet us there!  

Keystone is maybe not the most interesting resort out of the Colorado bunch, but we did find some pretty cool stuff to keep us entertained.  The first was this crazy snow fort with slides and tubes. We're pretty sure that this was made for kids, but come on, who can resist? 

Me and Jess in Kidtopia!

Another super cool thing about Keystone, is you can pay $10 to take a cat lap.  Yep, ride in a snow-cat to some untracked powder. Pretty sweet. We weren't sure how the conditions would be, but they turned out to be awesome!  

Me, Jess, Andy by the Cat!

Our cat lap was definitely a highlight of our trip!  We found boot deep super hero powder in a beautiful mellow bowl.  Thanks Jess and Andy for taking the adventure lap with us!  We finished out the day and had a great dinner with these two at Pug Ryan's in Frisco. 

Road Trippin' to Colorado

After a great week in Tahoe, (thanks again Jason and Kaitlyn!) we headed East to Colorado.  The drive would take us two days with an overnight in Salt Lake City (thanks for the bed Kate!).  The drive was often beautiful... and sometimes a little like this:

We stayed with my Cousin Colleen and her fiance, John, in Silverthorne, Colorado.  Many thanks to those guys for a great stay!  

We got to ski with John and Colleen at Vail the day after our arrival.  The skiing was great with recent snow leading to a successful powder hunt in Blue Sky Basin with John as our guide.  We also utilized the on-mountain public grills to grill meat we carried with us during the day.  You read that correctly, we packed 8 brats and buns in miscellaneous pockets all morning.

Mmmm... pocket meat.

After lunch we had good skiing on the Back Bowl side including the Shangri-La area.  On our way home we took another step in dispelling Shannon's fear of surface lifts (still a ways to go).  In this case, a poma:

HANG ON!

It snowed hard overnight into Monday morning and we rushed to Breckenridge for a great powder day.  We skied the Chair 6 tree zone before the alpine opened and then charged up high for some great powder.  Here's Shannon getting after it.  The chair on the right is the highest in North America, pretty neat.

Breckenridge proved to be a very playful, variety filled area and we had a great time all over the mountain on a day when the snow conditions made us feel like super heroes.  In the afternoon the clouds even started to open up and reveal the beauty of Colorado around us.

Cue the John Denver song...

We skied most of the terrain in this picture!

We finished our trip with a glimpse at this sign... stay alert!  As well as a nice dinner with John and Colleen in Frisco.