it was an indescribable day. it was filled with good omens, endorphin poppin' ski-action with good company (alec), sunny skies, and an even gooder (remember i learnt english in tejas) time with the family checking out the whatever annual breckenridge international snow sculpture championships. friday, the day before, was spent checking the noaa website for weather the drive up saturday morning. it forecasted snow last night and a front coming in breck at 11am with gusts up to 39 mph and wind (ch)ill factors ranging from -1 to 3 degrees fahrenheit. we considered bagging it but then we figured skiing is like sex and/or pizza. it might be bad pizza and/or sex but it's still that.
we rendezvous at the evergreen park and ride across from el rancho. the weather is just like noaa forecasted coupled with an atypical amount of traffic volume at i-70, 6:30 in the morning right before floyd hill. not a good start and alec was coming down with the sniffles (ahhh, the joys of being a secondary ed. teacher). good omen numero uno (das right, i'm bilingual and shizzle), after the winterpark turnoff, almost no traffic. good omen dos, we see blue skies behind the eisenhower tunnel. good omen tres, the gondola at the no-longer-free-parking-it-costs-ten-bucks-now is running and we park right underneath it. good omen quattro (i used to own an s-car audi so when i write or say, "quattro" i get all teary eyed) we are first in line at the gondola. all good things unfortunately must come to an end. when alec and i were in the gondola i began to get my gear dialed-in, which included zipping my pant leg over the cuff of my boot. get this, the plastic, male portion of the zipper that inserts into the female portion of the actual zipper, sheared off. and like a dodo, i pull on it and all the zippered portions are now coming unzipped. i bought these pants in the 90s and i don't know what they were thinking with a full zip on the lateral part of the leg up to the waist. anyhoo i was intrigued by the unzipping pattern and by the time i stopped pulling it, my freaking long johns were showing all the way up to my outer thigh. i was wearing my baby blue long johns too (cute for your honey but not to the general public--oi vay). i tried in vane to line up the teeth but alas it was to no avail. so here i am in the gondola with my left leg exposed, showing my baby blue long johns. luckily there was a clothing place at the foot of breck where i purchased some obermeyers that's slightly too big for me (i need a small instead of a medium, oh well).
we do some warm up stuff and over the prime bowl areas we see some clouds start to roll in. so we figure we better hit that stuff now before they close the access lifts for those areas. when we get to the imperial summit, there's a line of people portaging their skis to get to the extreme area (chutes and the 3 or 4 or so bowls back there). i'm not the type who seeks this type of terrain (but hopes that the group doesn't do groomers) but i figure what the heck, alec is a pretty accomplished skier, and we ski within our skill level (if not a smidge past it to get better). if you notice on the picture, the path up is already notched by previous skiers jamming their extruded toe portion of their boot into the snow. on the way up (alec's behind me), we see this ski-hiker fall and i swear while she's actively falling she has this non-plussed look on her face and attitude and is actually talking to the ascending skiers while she's sliding down (saying stuff like she's okay and she'll try it again). it was all slow motion and nutty to boot. alec and i saw the same nuances on this girl and it was straaaange. it looked like the hilary step because of the log jam it caused. the pause in the ascension was due to the some off-camber rocks on the path. if you didn't step way past the little rock abutments in the path, the angle of incidence of your step might be enough to rebound you backwards, or to slip (which was homegirl's case). get this, we're already leaning mightily forward. i was envious of alec's ski-specific camelback that had straps to portage skis. he used his poles as outriggers whereas i right-shouldered my dynastars (thank-you javier), and jammed my two poles in the baked snow, with my left hand, to give my steps a contra-lateral shove-off. it was a physiological feat (no pun intended) to hike in snowboots, carrying gear at mid-11k feet. when we got to the top, alec's spigot (on the camelback) was on and water leaked onto his whole right side. it looked like the abominable snowman spritzed on him to mark him as part of his property (look closely, you can see it on the picture). alec dropped-in first and rocked it and yours truly did likewise. we thought it would be a hop and turn gig all the way down. we were pleasantly surprised by how styrofoam-like the snow was and there was no need to hop-turn. the skis contacted the snow the entire time and it was telegraphic between the brain, ski, movement, snow and the carve. in our mind's eye, it was like we were starring in our own ski video. yes our thighs were burning but you should've seen the smiles on our faces. incidentally, road cycling has no crossover fringe benefits leg-wise in skiing, but holy mackeral that run was sublime...
round two, we do the opposite bowl and we don't have to hike up steep terrain. at 11.5k feet, it's colorado's treeline and at this level, it's all scree. were we want to go, it looks like a saddle (side-view) so we tuck the downhill and portage our skis the rest of the way up, by now we're walking the ridge line. we don't know which bowl to hit so we ask another skier which one has the best snow. seems confident it's this a-way so we follow him. we take off our skis again to walk over a scree field. then lo and behold, like moses looking at the promised land, we see this palavacchini-steep run that's 20x longer with no hidden rocks (here, the rocks are large and conspicuous), and on a bowl, check out the picture. if you've been to the grand canyon and look over the precipice, your body feels like it's entered some electric void. this is how we felt. pictures do it no justice. it was steeper than the imperial chutes, but it was a bowl, so again we turned often and quickly to keep our speed in check and the snow was again, styrofoam-like. good omen cinco: 11am rolled around and the skies were as blue as a colorado day in june. fast forward our break and some mogully attempts but we're jonesing again for that latter bowl run. my legs are cramping so alec agrees to call it quits, for my sake, once we finish this run and i can meet melissa and my kids for the ice sculptures. this time at the top of the saddle the wind is greater than or equal to, gale force winds. the people in front of us (and we) were being buffeted. we thought if it were any stronger we would be blown off the ridge line. all of us had to stop, face leeward and make our ski's surface area as small as possible because they were acting like sails, not to mention we were getting a bead blasted paint job on all exposed skin due to the snow pommeling us. nuhh-teee. once the wind died down, we hit it again and the endorphins are flooding us, and my cramps are telling me to head on down (which we do). on the gondola ride back, euphoria is oozing out of our pores. good omen sies: no one's manning the parking booth when we leave, therefore it's free. after alec and i do our oh so masculine goodbyes, he drops me off in town, i hook up with my family, have a nice lunch and check out the ice sculptures. wow. somebody pinch me....
ps. we're tied for sixth currently in our state's top ten of days snowed, which is 32 (and counting).
check out the rest of the pics on that glorious day on my photosite url.
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