We woke up far before our 7:30 wake up time because our room was freezing and we went to bed at 10 PM. Oh, and we might have been a little bit excited.
We had some breakfast and waxed our boards. I know this sounds kind of inappropriate (I have to sensor myself a little, my mom is reading this. Hi Mom!), but we did actually put wax on our snowboards. It's great fun.
Then, the snowboarding began!
Look, here's me before getting onto the first chairlift. I am proud to report I did not take out any fellow skiers today after my disastrous day last Saturday when I was unable stay upright and took out no less than 12 people getting off the chairlift (sorry folks!).
This is a picture of Chris at the top of the first mountain. Yes, first, because there are three. Ski Liberty, you got nothin!
The next few pictures are of us shredding some powder. Yes, with the 'g' because we aren't that hip.
It was a great day out. Sunny and not too cold. So sunny that my one eye is actually shut (not just small because I have small eyes, although, my other eye is open even though it might not look like it).
I honestly have no idea at what part of the mountain this picture was taken, but I look happy, so it must have been early before my ankles and knees started to give out.
Oh, fun notes about riding the chairlift:
1. We met a guy who was on his 112th day of skiing this year. How long has ski season been so far in Colorado? 112 days. He's aiming for 240 days this season. That is 8 months people! Pennsylvania and it's pathetic 3 month ski season can suck it! This is how he's spending his retirement. I might have to take a page from this guy's book when I turn 30 and retire.
2. We met a guy from Bethesda, MD. And he lived in Boston. Apparently this world is very small.
We did a lot of riding of various difficulty. Note: I am not that good. But I like to try and figure the burning sensation in my quads is only making me stronger. Yeah Kanye!
Here we are at the top of one of the mountains. Breckenridge Ski Resort is in the background. We're heading there on Thursday. Did I mention Colorado is really freaking beautiful? I think we're at about 12,000 feet and neither of us was delirious with altitude sickness so I count that as a plus.
We wanted to see these mysterious "bowl" things so we rode up to the third mountain (which takes like 5 runs because you have to go up one lift to go down another run to get to another lift to go down another run, etc, etc, etc as you make your way across all of these mountains. It's ridiculous.) We got to the top and the ski patrol guy told us to go down by all of these trees. It was awesome...we were riding through trees (mom, we did not hit any of them) and then got to some crazy bump things. This led to me falling about 75% of the time. However, exciting news! Apparently my snowpants can zip to the back of my jacket. This lead to a significant decrease in snow going down my pants. My butt was very happy about this. Here is a picture of me at the bottom of this crazy run (called a chute...I might have wanted to shoot myself halfway down since my legs no longer worked). I am pooped.
However, shortly after we decided to stop being little babies and made our way back. And lo and behold! We found a bowl! (It was sadly not filled with Cinnamon Toast Crunch) Here's the bowl:
Turns out a bowl is, well, bowl shaped. And you start at the top and go down to the bottom, but it's very natural terrain. We went through more trees (mom, again, we did not hit any!) and got to make our own pathways and stuff. They were definitely my favorite part of the day. However, riding bowls is hard. A lot of what is is there is fresh powder. The best way I can describe riding on fresh powder is that it feels like you are riding on a cloud (I know, I played Mario Bros once or twice in my life). And like riding on a cloud, when you fall on powder it doesn't hurt. However, also like riding on a cloud, when you try to put your hand down to push yourself back up, you sort of just sink. Until you are up to your shoulders in snow with your board buried under a couple of feet, resulting in your writhing around for 10 minutes trying to put yourself right side up (which may or may not have happened to me many many times). Anyways...the bottom line is that you get tired. So here is a picture of Chris "resting" (or falling, or recovering from falling):
We rode pretty much straight through from this morning until just after 3 PM. We decided that if we stopped we wouldn't get going again so we powered on. The entire day I had been wanting to ride on the GonDOLa (as the nice young lady at the desk pronounced it), but we didn't make it there until our last run. Here's a picture of me on the GonDOLa:
My smile looks pretty fake because I'm pretty sure I'm summoning all of my energy lifting those cheeks into that insincere grin.Overall though, today was AWESOME. Snowboarding on a weekday (and on a mountain (s) with a vertical drop greater than 600 ft and more than 12 runs) means that it isn't crowded and you have lots of free space to do your thang. Some of those bowl runs are so peaceful and beautiful because it's just you and the trees (because Chris is waiting for you to dig yourself out 5 minutes ahead). Tomorrow we're hitting up Vail (because I want to say that I went to Vail) and they apparently have some amazing bowls.
We're now livin' it up and maybe cooking dinner (or going to sleep).
Free Nature Valley Honey Oat Granola Bars aquired today: 4 (they just give them to you when you buy your lift ticket. Coloridians (?) Colorado-ites (?) Colorado-ese (?) are quite nice like that.
Subaru Count: 6 (we didn't actually drive anywhere today, so it was only what we saw in the parking lot).
Peace out homies!
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