I just got back from the airport after my trip out west. Here's a quick report for ya.
12/15 - Flew into DIA, landed at 8:00am. Got into the truck and made it to the Colorado Super Chair at Breckenridge by 10:30am. It was sunny, about 30ish degrees, and a slight breeze when you got above the tree line. Since it was our first day out, and we were a bit tired from traveling, we mainly stuck to the groomers on peaks 8 & 9. Even though it was warm and sunny, it wasn't slushy, conditions were very good. We rode till the lifts closed, then checked into the Lodge & Spa at Breckenridge.
Lodge & Spa - Was decent. We got a good deal on it, so we had no complaints. It's located across the valley from the slopes, looking down on the city of Breck. There were two hot tubs located on a deck overlooking the mountains, which was awesome at night. They had a free shuttle that you could call any time between 8am - 12am for a ride anywhere in town, including to the lifts.
12/15 night - Rasta Pasta - Yum!
12/16 - We checked the snow report, and saw that nothing new had fallen in Summit County overnight, so we decided to check out Keystone as we'd never been there before and didn't want to over-do it at Breck on this trip. I was pretty impressed with the place. It was 35ish and sunny, but windy when you got to the summit of each peak. Conditions were again very good, and Keystone has a very impressive snow-making system. I saw more snow guns there then I've ever seen at any other resort. It was evident that they'd been in use lately, as the snow was decent quality. We hit up most of Keystone, leaving the front face for later in the evening as we figured we could check it out for night-riding. By 4:30pm though, we were so fried from riding since 9am that we decided to leave. Keystone had some amazingly long runs down the front face that I would very much like to check out again in the future.
12/16 Night -We relaxed at the Lodge and at 9ish we jumped into the hot-tub. There was a wedding banquet in the hotel earlier in the evening that we saw, but by the time we went into the tub it had pretty much died down. This is where things got weird... Right after we got into the tub on the deck, some 20ish girl walked by us, wearing a black cocktail dress, a beer bottle in each hand, and wobbling a bit. All the sudden, she walked back towards us, and jumped into the tub, black dress and all, clearly drunk out of her mind. She proceeded to tell us that she had hitch-hiked there from Denver, for the wedding, and had done many "unspeakable, embarrassing things". She said "I can't afford a room here, so I'm not staying." Which made me wonder to myself "then why the heck did you just jump into a hot tub at 9:30pm in your clothes?" She just kept talking and talking, even though we weren't responding, we were simply dumbfounded. Then she started flopping around, trying to swim or something. After that, we noticed a guy off to the left, taking off his dress suit. She started screaming "I loooooove you..." to the guy. When he came over to get into the tub, we took that as our cue to get outta there before it got even weirder.
12/17 - Back to Breckenridge. It snowed about an inch overnight, and was steadily snowing during the day adding about another 1-2 inches. We spent most of the day out on Peak 7. It was much colder then the previous days, with a stronger wind and no sun. Still, the conditions were good, and we had a fun time.
12/18 - Weather report was for 1 inch of snow at Breck, but 1-3 inches at Vail. I set the alarm early, just incase there might be more at Vail as the back bowls were open. At 6:00am the alarm went off, and I called the snow-report line. 7 new inches at Vail overnight! We got up and hit the road. The going was slow due to some accidents blocking the roads, but we ended up on the Vista Bahn Express by 9:30am. We spent the entire day in the Back Bowls and at Blue Sky Basin. It was AWESOME. 40 degrees, sunny, no wind, no clouds and 7" of fresh powder. Not 'bottomless' by any means, but still fluffy and light. We stayed till they closed the lifts.
We came home today, and everyone out there is talking about the major storm on the way that's supposed to hit Summit and Eagle County tomorrow. 8-18" of snow is supposed to fall, they say. Would have been fun to stick around for the new snow that's supposed to fall, but that just wasn't in the cards.
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