Now at Vail

I started by myself at Vail, click on the above for more pictures.

Top of China bowl

View Vail 2011-02-28 10:28 in a larger map

First day at Breckenridge

We started our anniversary holiday at Breckenridge, click on the pic above for some photos.

Here's where we skiied


View Breckenridge 2011-02-27 10:46 in a larger map

On the deck at peak 8

Fabulous dinner at Hearthstone

In breckenridge...

A day at Sierra at Tahoe, with lots of snow and people

I took President's day and drove up to Sierra at Tahoe for a day of skiing (87 miles and 2 hours each way, exactly with 23 mpg up the hill and 37 mpg down). I was on the lifts 15 min after they opened, which is probably the earliest in years for me. They had a lot of snow, probably 6-8 feet in the last week so conditions were spectacular, especially for those going off trail. I stuck to the groomed and had a great time. I used MyTracks application to partially track my day (it ran out of batteries about an hour before I did) so some of these are estimates. I logged 15k vertical, about 12 miles horizontally, with a max speed of 34 mph, and a max pitch of 37 degrees. That pitch seems odd to me, since only one trail was steep, and that was after my app ran out of power. I tried to export my map, but again it doesn't work correctly.

Here is the first part -- I think it is limited by data in the GPX export -- because my phone tracks the whole day.

It was very crowded, a function of great conditions and being a long holiday weekend. But it was a good day trip, and if you click on the pic above you can see some other pictures I took.

Grand Piano at Grandparents House

The girls were visiting their grandparents and are now big enough to pound the ivory on the grand piano, with some supervision. It's even more delightful than their play piano at home ... at least for them.

They have discovered new foods in the last week: egg foo yung, fish in black bean sauce, pizza crusts, garlic mashed potatoes, chicken teriyaki and pea soup.

Click on the pic for a few more pix of them doing their Ray Charles imitation.

Tahoe has lots of snow

Tahoe has lots of snow now, multiple feet in the last few days. Here's a clip from Heavenly Valley. I'd like to get up there in the next few days, but we'll have to see what the family schedule is like. It's also a holiday weekend so it's more hectic than usual at the resorts.

Speed Riding Wengen

Midweek at Northstar

I took a day off today and grabbed a local bus to Northstar. It was an older group, and a fun mini midweek trip, but conditions were firm, almost Vermont like. They have not had any fresh snow for a month, so snow making and grooming are really needed. With thaw/freeze cycles, and no grooming, slopes quickly become too icy to turn on, so I only wandered off those treated trails once, which was a mistake. In the East, generally if they don't groom, they don't have thaw/freeze cycles, so one doesn't see as much sun baked trails as I saw today. Temperatures were 30F with bright sun and blue skies, which was better than what we experienced in Utah recently.

There are a few pictures, which can be seen from the link above. I also used the google app, MyTracks, while at the mountain to keep track of where I went as well as provide various statistics. While skiing I logged ~20 horizontal miles, 19k vertical feet (conditions were fast/firm indeed), and hit a peak speed of 33mph at some point. The "steepest" gradient was 24 degrees, which is fine. I would post a more specific track of my path, except I'm having issues exporting the data out of my HTC EVO, and have tried all the major data formats.

A trip to the Museum

Today was Sacramento Museum day, when admission is free to a couple dozen local museums. We bundled up the girls and took them first to the state railroad museum, which was filled with locomotives of yesteryear. After than we went for a stroll through Old Sacramento, and the girls tried some frozen yogurt (messy!). Then we went to the newly renovated Crocker Art Museum, where we refueled kids' milk tanks, and explored their collection of American painters. You can click on the picture above to see some highlights of the day.

That evening family came over for supper, and I grilled some lemon chicken and prepared penne with pecorino & anise in a tomato sauce. A long, but fun day, and we're ready to go to sleep now.