Arapahoe Basin w/ colleagues

peep the picasa slideshow kids...
some of a-basin's higher than loveland pass (which is right next door)

still batting a thousand skiing with alec. 'twas another lovely day skiing in colorado. i had to leave early because i'm going to take my lovely daughters to their valentine day's dance at their elementary school tonight. this was alec's idea: go skiing on our parent-teacher conference exchange day. turned out to be an exceptionally good idea folks. it was a nice turnout. we invited a boat load of people and here's who showed up: a dude from social studies and his girl, two sharp dudes from the p.e. department: simon and chris; and the rest were from science: larry, alec, tom-tom, george (whom we call jorge), chris and his sister cassie, and me. great turnout.
it wasn't the usual let's kill ourselves (alec and i) on some nutty terrain; rather, let's make some turns and be rather social. no ipods. this wasn't the case after lunch though when chris, simon, alec, and i decided to do pallevicini. we didn't over do it but we did hit it fairly hard. it was a blast skiing with my colleagues. a-basin just recently expanded their terrain so we spent some time back there. the snow coverage was great. although the sun was playing peek-a-boo all day the snow felt like styrofoam. definitely no powder but everything else was exceptional.
one nutty exception: tom-tom was a hostile projectile today (i.e. alec's brown heat-seeking missile). whenever a group'd get ahead from the bunch they'd wait for the others...
tom-tom as hostile projectile instance: one. tom was cruising in the new expanded area and he tried to thread the needle between alec, me, and chris magrin who were all stopped and waiting. he tagged both alec and my skis then biffed it trying to go around chris. crazy bastidge. alec and i looked at each other and silently (and mutually) thought: WTF? fast forward a bit and
for lunch, we meet at the cars and drink some maredsous, jorge's trail mix and fritos scoops, and imbibe his grandfather's (ARGGGHHH!) homemade moonshine.
l-r: simon, chris, alec, larry, tom-tom, and jorge

that moonshizzle was lethizzle! it'd make you speak in tongues. i usually never drink when i ski but today was so celebratory and unique i had to imbibe. just two beers. nothing to make any state trooper have a reason to pull me over or anything.
after lunch we hit it again and we hit some runs in the middle of the mountain. granted there's nobody here really but us. the snow here's super packed the speeds can just get loopy if you don't scrub some speed off when you turn (i like turning) as opposed to going straight.
tom-tom as a hostile projectile, instance: two. alec, chris, simon, and i gun it from the top and we meet in the middle to wait. tom emits this crazy yelp before impacting alec. not only was tom in warp speed but he placed a lick on alec that was national hockey league body check quality. alec must've moved at least ten feet from his original spot and bent his ski pole. tom had a mini yard sail after the collision. again we mentally said WTF?
the snow's exceptional and i had to leave so i suggested we do pallevicini. it's the one to the right of the lift on the bottom picture. if you also notice there's a matterhorn-esque wall at the very top that eventually becomes less steep. this is what happens when the group you're with has some skill.

here's another picture going up as we parallel pallevicini. notice the angle of the slope with the trees straight up as a reference point.

here's simon, chris, and alec all smiles at the top of palli

here's chris, alec, and me about to drop-in on the matterhorn lip.

yessir. another lovely day. if i'm lucky i'll get my bottom handed to me again tomorrow on the old denver spoke ride.
oh man. just got back from my first elementary school dance. 3 (or 4) words: little...people...moshpit. wow.