Back from Colorado

I returned from Colorado late this afternoon, having enjoyed a wonderful week of skiing with college alumni at Beaver Creek and Vail. We mixed it up between the two resorts, but I think most of us enjoyed Vail more. The snow was fantastic at both areas (4 feet over the week!) but was even better at Vail. I also like the trails there better, and its hard to compare anything to their sunny backside. We spent a whole morning riding the Orient Express up and down, enjoying the wide open expanses. Despite the large amount of visitors they get -- 20,000 a day I'm told -- there is enough mountain space to scatter them out except for a few choke points, like Two Elk at lunch or the bottom of Born Free at days end.

I've visited Colorado off and on over the last dozen plus years, and this was easily the coldest and snowiest I've experienced it. The temperatures were more like frosty Quebec than the sunny Rockies. Above is Eagles Nest viewed from the top of the mountain, at approximately 11,000 feet, and cold and windy. I had to take the battery out of the camera and warm it up by rubbing it on my fleece to get the camera to register the voltage! I have put a few more pictures here.

First Day at Beaver Creek

We had our first ski day at Beaver Creek this morning, after fueling up with breakfast tortillas and baked beans. It was about 40F at the base but after we took the Centennial lift up to the mid mountain area it got cold and snowy quickly. It snowed 4 in or so during the course of the day, and we are forecast to get another 6-12 in tonight. From the the top of Centennial we took Harrier down to the Red Tail area. There was a lot of soft fresh snow, but the trail was a little hairier than we needed for the first run of the week -- still we got down eventually.

From there we took Larkspur up to the big broad trail off the top of that lift. It was choppier than it would be normally after grooming, but we enjoyed it so much that we repeated it. The fog was getting heavy now, so we took the Birds of Prey lift up to the top of the Mountain. We enjoyed all the easy trails at the top for an hour or so, before our legs started getting rubbery, and it was time to start planning a route home. The top runs here are blessed with good snow and gentle pitches, but the Cinch lift does accumulate a lot of skiiers.
We eventually took the Gold Dust trail all the way back down to the base, which was probably something like 3000 vertical feet, so it was a nice long ride. It was challenging in parts, and reminded me of Canyon at Sun Valley or Silver Queen at Aspen, although not as steep. But with the soft fresh snow here it was easy to turn on anything even if was steep, most unlike icy Vermont.

Once we got home we piled into the hot tub and then lit up a roaring fire while we baked a pan of potato au gratin and grilled some skirt and flank steaks, paired with a 91 Anderson Conn Creek and a 90 Grand Mayne. It was a nice way to close a good day.

Bromley MLK 2009

We spent the official Martin Luther King holiday skiing at Bromley, rather than our usual mountain. There had been a half foot of fresh snow the day before and we felt like trying something different. Bromley is south facing, unusual for most ski areas, and does not have as much snowmaking as Okemo, so I like to pick our spots to go there when the weather has been cooperative. A perfect day there is cold, sunny, and has recent snowfall. Because it is south facing, when it's sunny you get the remarkable combination of skiing with the sun shining on your face which is great. You also pick up solar gain which can warm you up as well.

It was subfreezing and snowy although cloudy but these were still fantastic conditions. Every run was open and all lifts were running so we buzzed all over the mountain. J. wanted to start skiing some of the signature runs of this mountain so she went down the main run under the lift line (Twister) a few times. With the perfect snow conditions it was quite manageable for her; when it gets icy / bumpy I am happy to avoid it but the conditions on Monday were perfect. I took a few runs at high speed (for me) without stopping to get ready for next week.

Ending the day exhilarated and exhausted is the perfect last run.

MLK Weekend - 2009

I have been serving jury duty the last few days, and am really hoping that the case is resolved by the time I have to leave next weekend. If it's not, I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I started on the 14th and we were told by the clerk that 10 days was enough of a margin of safety to not request a postponement. Given the free time on my hands, I wanted to get it done with anyways.

We were at Okemo yesterday, with the temps ranging from -2F through 12F, although there was no wind but clearly it was severely cold. The cashiers even gave us a few discounts for future lift tickets since it was so bitter. Afterwards we met some of Jenn's co-workers for apres ski, which is one of the few times I've done that at my own home mountain, since I was normally in a hurry to get back so that Lena could get walked etc. It's weird not having to hurry back home now. One kind of interesting thing we saw was that J's cousin Kim and her family are being used for the the Okemo Mountain Photographer's sample family shot in the main lodge. It's an excellent photo of them, but I think it was Photoshopped a little to make the colors more vibrant.

The mountain was totally open with all the lifts running, and although conditions were putatively "packed powder", I would have characterized them as more machine groomed with lots of crunchy man made snow. We buzzed around the main mountain and J. got introduced to many of the more interesting intermediate level trails including the bigger ones like Chief and Boomerang. We got home and made a pot of fondue with the one we had brought home from Gstaad. Today it snowed about 4 inches so we stayed in doing chores and loading the wood stove while we baked brined chicken breasts and potatoes au gratin.

Christmas Decorations on Steroids

This was kind of an unusual weekend, since we stayed in the city during ski season, and we went out to dinner a few times. On Friday night we went to an Alsatian restaurant, Cafe d'Alsace, where we had some traditional dishes of that French region. Jennifer and I shared a bowl of bouillabaisse -- a saffron infused fish stew -- and then had some charcoutrie which is a sauerkraut and sausage casserole. It went well with the winter storm that rolled in. Then last night we met one of my prior coworkers for dinner at Rolf's, which is a traditional German restaurant. The food there tends to be underwhelming, but the decor is festive for the winter season, and the main reason to visit. You can see from the pictures how overboard they go with the holiday decorations.
Today we dropped a few things at my sister's apartment and then went shopping on the Upper West Side afterwards since we had the car out. We stopped at Zabars, Fairway, and Citarella for groceries. After coming back home, Jenn made chicken tortilla soup, good on a cold day. The snow storm was only a few inches, not the half foot or so that seemed likely on Friday. Hopefully the drive up north this weekend will be clear.

Cassique Obligaire !

We just got back from Mont Tremblant where cassique obligaire (helmets mandatory) seems to be the rule of the day on many ski runs. That's probably a good thing.