My parents never took me on a ski vacation. I always wanted to go, so I did. I flew down to Colorado on Friday. The flight was originally scheduled for 7 pm, but a huge storm was supposed to dump 6" that afternoon, so I went standby on the 6:10 am flight. Luckily, I was the last standby called and got on the plane. Then in JFK, I was was also waiting standby. Fingers crossed, I made it!
Ate some Panda Express in Denver, took the airport shuttle for $19 to meet my friend Michelle downtown, finished some work and had a conference call, then.... freedom!
Saturday we had rental car issues. My buddy Brig was going to drive to downtown, pick us up, and go skiing with us all day but his babysitter bailed on him. We made an online reservation at Enterprise and went to pick it up, but the guy said that they actually didn't have availability. We eventually got everything sorted out, then hopped in our Pontiac Vibe and headed to Vail.
Snow was dumping out of the sky and I-70 was a nightmare. Luckily, I've been driving on snow since I learned to drive and we didn't have any problems. But it was SLOW. By the time we got to Vail it was 12:30, and I still needed to rent skis. Vail is ridiculously expensive the grocery store discount ticket machine wasn't working. After some quick calculations, I decided that it wouldn't be worth it to ski Vail. Keystone, however, offers night skiing, so we could get more for our money.
We hopped back in the Vibe and started backtracking. Vail pass was a nightmare and several cars had slid off the road. We kept driving carefully and made it to Keystone without any problems. (Authors note: Keystone has incredible signs everywhere telling you where to go and what to do - Vail has none)
FINALLY, we got on the mountain at 2 PM. It was pretty chilly so we had thrown on some extra layers at the car. As the sun set and night skiing started, it got really really cold. Really cold. Very cold. Everyone was wrapped up so you couldn't see an inch of skin. The lift line was almost nonexistent.
Wondering how cold it was, I skied close to a sign they had at the top of the lift. It read: "-4 F, Feels like -30 F. SEVERE FROSTBITE WARNING!" I fear that the temperature was a bit intimidating, because we didn't take too many runs after that.
3 comments:
sounds like a fun trip despite severe frostbite warnings
I rented a vibe on my ski vacation, too. It was awesome. The ski vacation. Not the vibe. Although I did like the rear view mirror...
Hey, some friends of mine made a spontaneous trip to Vail the same time you were there. Strange.
Looks like you had fun though!
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