Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Steamboat - Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Wednesday morning we woke up to beautiful skies. It was not quite clear and sunny, but it wasn't snowing and it didn't look as if it would start to snow. We could see the clouds clearing in the distance and knew that this would be a great day of skiing because of the new snow from the day before.

We set the alarm so we could get an early start on the day, however, Cornbread woke up and promptly took a 45 minute nap while I was buying tickets;)

We had one more section of the mountain that we had not tried yet and this was the day. It was a bit intimidating on the map because it was almost entirely black diamond runs with only one or two blues mixed in. Once again, though, the runs were almost empty and we were out there on our own to take them as slow as we wanted and as many times as we wanted.

We did the same run a couple of times because it was so challenging and we were alone and having a good time. The previous day we did a lot of tree skiing, this day we did moguls and moguls and more moguls.

We started out with Middle Rib - a black run that was extremely steep and narrow. It was super fast and we had a great time with it.

(these are not my photos - I took them off of flikr)
This is a photo looking up at Middle Rib - it didn't look like this the day we did it - not so many branches in the middle of the run.

We veered off of Middle Rib onto Outlaw.

This is a picture from the top of Outlaw (again, not my photo). It is a good picture of the view... the run winds around to the left of the photo.

When we got to the top of outlaw, we had absolutely no idea what we were getting into:) As it turns out it was winding and twisting moguls on a very narrow run with a pretty severe drop-off on the right side. We had a great time with it, though. The fresh powder from the day before slowed us down enough that we could confidently work out way through the bumps. We were not good. We were not graceful. We fell a lot, but we had an awesome time on those two runs.

We also ventured into some ungroomed runs, which was not so much fun;) I think the only run that had been groomed the night before was Middle Rib... we tried them all, though. Skiing through heavy, deep, ungroomed powder is pretty difficult. I fell so much on this side of the mountain and got really banged up. We did one run, Fool's Gold, that was incredibly ridiculous. It was entirely moguls with trees on either side and they had 4 inches of fresh powder on them. We had no bailing options so we had to get through it. We both had several experiences of one ski getting stuck while the other kept going - causing a pretty harsh fall where my legs felt like they were getting ripped out of my torso;) I got pretty beat up on those runs. We clearly had no business being there, but no one was watching, no one was waiting for us, we charged forward and tried - without trying we would never get better.

After doing that side of the mountain for most of the morning, we made our way back to Storm Peak - the part we did in the snow the previous day. The runs there were much better on this day because we could actually see what we were doing! We enjoyed them for a while and then went back to the part of the mountain that we did on Sunday and Monday and did a few runs there. It was pretty amazing how slow and boring those runs felt now that we had done some pretty difficult stuff on the other side of the mountain for two days.

We opted to ski late into the day and grab lunch back at the condo instead of spending so much on the mountain. We made lunch in the condo and watched LOST from the night before (and it was GOOD - so many answers in one episode AND a theological conversation between Jacob and Richard Alpert...).

Wednesday night was the last night that we were responsible for paying for dinner so we decided to do some shopping in the little downtown area and go out for my birthday. We went to every tshirt shop on the street (and for some reason they all smelled like farts) and also picked up some gifts for Carol. It was nice to tool around and follow our noses through the shops and have no agenda at all.

We chose Giovanni's for dinner. I had scoured the menus of many of the restaurants while we were in the condo and finally settled on this little Italian place that didn't serve mainly pasta, but mostly other dishes that looked delicious. I ordered the smoked duck risotto and it was incredible - mmmmm.


Our dinner was interesting. The product partner was hosting another dinner at the table next to us. We walked past the table when we were seated and said hello and joked about how we were following them. I had my back to the table and could overhear much of the conversation. Apparently, he was hosting an FA/spouse and the FA's daughter who is married to another FA. The Father (following this?) is exceptionally successful and makes gobs of money. The daughter, having grown up with all of this money and all of these trips, was quite the spoiled brat. At one point I heard her say, "I wasn't going to marry anyone who wasn't already an FA or was going to become an FA." Yeah, impressive. It is a thought-provoking comment from our perspective... however, it was amazingly spoiled coming out of her mouth.

As we left the dinner, we stopped to say goodbye and told the product partner that we were happy that his son was feeling better and that his whole family was able to be at dinner (at our dinner with him the night before his wife was back at the condo with his sick son). His wife, then, turned and gave us the dirtiest look I have ever seen. Cornbread saw it, too, so it wasn't just my imagination. We still have no idea what that was about... but this particular person gets more impressive through the end of the week - stay tuned for that;) We walked away kind of stunned - not sure what that was about, but whatever...

Went back to the room and called Mark and Jane to challenge them to a game of Euchre. Spent the rest of the night playing cards and chatting, preparing for our last day of skiing.

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