Another entertaining trip to Colorado this year, full of snowboarding, partying, and relaxing. Went with some family, like last time, and rented a four-bedroom house near downtown Frisco. The trip there wasn’t without any hitches though, as the airline somehow lost my younger brother’s suitcase, which made us miss the shuttle to Frisco. We did eventually get there (very) late at night, and his luggage was recovered the next evening.

Took it easy the first day and did a half-day of skiing at Keystone. This was followed by a special treat: one of the biggest Mardi Gras celebrations in Colorado was held adjacent to the lifts at Keystone Village. It wasn’t huge or anything, but their were a lot of people, and it was a good time. Everyone was lined up along the streets drinking while ‘home-made’ floats came past with people in costumes dancing and throwing out beads to the onlookers.

I was happy that we started off with a half-day as my leg muscles killed the next morning. That along with the altitude change kind of affected my performance the first few days, but I was able to get by. We started off every morning by waking up around 6:00am, eating breakfast and packing lunches, and then arriving before the ski-lifts even started at the destination of choice. We visited a different resort every day (Keystone, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Vail, Loveland Pass), and generally ‘boarded until near closing time (4:00-5:00pm) at which point we would get out of our gear and head for food and drinks at a nearby restaurant. Then it was back to the house to rest for a while, go to bed around 9:00-10:00pm, and start all over again. I ended every day exhausted as hell.

Other than Mardi Gras, other interesting points include seeing a family of porcupine sitting up high in some pine trees eating, a temperature change of negative thirty degrees or so on the last day when we were

at Loveland Pass that made us limit our day to one run, and almost getting myself stranded off-trail in the forest at Vail and having to call for help. I was going down one of the bowls through the forest and miscalculated the direction of the lift, which made leave the trail entirely, ski past the (off-limits) rescue path, down an embankment, and almost into a river. I was stuck in a gully, by myself, far away from any of the other skiers or help. The snow was over four feet deep. I tried climbing out with little luck. I had my cell phone, but I was prevented from calling for help because (1) I didn’t know where I was at in the first place and had no markers, and (2) calling for rescue personnel would be pretty embarrassing and if anyone found out I would never be allowed to forget about the incident. Well, I worked out a method where I used my snowboard along with my arms to slowly pull myself up, on my knees, through the snow. It took two hours or so, and left me exhausted and my knees sore. I’m staying near the trails from now on.

It was another great trip, enhanced by the (almost) perfect weather, and lack of broken bones or serious injuries to my person.

Video Clips

Here are some short video clips that I shot with my digital camera. These videos are hosted on Google Video and should have automatically loaded along with the rest of this page. If you have any problems seeing or hearing the videos, please look here for help.

An ill-fated attempt at filming while snowboarding.

The Mardi Gras parade at Keystone Resort.

The Mardi Gras parade at Keystone Resort: "Dancing Grannies".

The Mardi Gras parade at Keystone Resort: "Dancing "Schoolgirls".

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 27th, 2007 at 1:44 am and is filed under Travels. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.