Winter Park, Colorado
The last of my post-law school graduation festivities is over. First Disney World, then a long ski weekend in Colorado. Thanks to my in-laws for sending me! Actually, now I’m wondering to myself, my wife had to put up with me being a student for four years, where is her weekend get a way? I’ll have to think on that some.
I flew out Friday after work. I had to wait for 90 minutes for my scheduled shuttle to take me from the airport to the resort. There were about four other people on the shuttle. We stopped along the way and I picked up some Diet Dr. Pepper and a package of chocolate mini-doughnuts. I’m not on the P90x diet when I’m on vacation! Winter Park is north of I-70 on We got to the Winter Park resort about 11:45 pm and I checked in at the Winter Park Mountain Lodge. It must be one of the oldest hotels up there. There is a newer wing but I was put in the back part of the hotel, the oldest part. I had to climb two flights of stairs to get to my room – not fun considering the abuse my legs took on the slopes.
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The room was fine, nothing fancy and it was clean. There was really only one place to get food there at the hotel, the Moffat Restaurant. The food was pretty good. They had a full breakfast buffet which I took full advantage of with medium-sized portions of eggs, hash browns, bacon, sausage, yogurt and a bowl of granola.
On Saturday morning first thing at 8:00 I stopped by the small rental shop to check on getting my skis tuned up for the day. I also needed new gloves because my old ones had holes in them. They couldn’t get my skis done so they just rolled on some wax. I bought a new pair of gloves for $50 and rented a helmet for two days. I really thought long and hard about whether to by the $50 gloves or the $95 pair, but of course my wife’s voice echoed in my mind and I made the better choice.
With a full stomach and lots of anticipation, I rode the shuttle over to the base of the mountain and got in line for a ski pass. The lines were long! It took almost 15 minutes to get my pass. For the first time ever, I saw a new ski pass attachment system: little black wire ties instead of wire wickets. Not as cool as Solitude in Big Cottonwood though, they use RFID readers and cards that go in your pocket!
I stopped in the store at the mountain base and bought a couple of blue raspberry G2′s and two harvest Power Bars for lunch. I wasn’t going to buy the $10 sloppy joes most ski resorts serve for lunch up in the middle mountain lunch shacks.
Once I got up on the first lift I scanned the trial map trying to decide where to go. Once I figured it out, I realized the only way to get to the base of the lift I wanted was to take a long black diamond run. I had hoped to at least take one warm up run on a blue before hitting the mogul-filled blacks. Oh well, I thought. As I entered the run called “Outlaw” I noticed the following sign: “Warning: Outlaw is a very long, steep, challenging run with no access to easier terrain. Enter at your own risk.” Warning signs like that don’t bother me because I’ve skied for all but 7 years of my life.
I entered the run. The moguls were deep and there was about 3-4 inches of fresh snow in the past 48 hours which softened them up quite a bit, although the run was entirely tracked out (meaning no untouched areas of smooth, trackless snow). After the first ten turns my thighs were burning pretty bad. I pulled up to the side. It was a long run! I knew I was in trouble – I was too out of shape. I had only been working out again for barely three weeks. It was a classic case of a willing mind and a weak body. I gradually made my way down in ten-turn bursts, each followed by a 30-second breather to let my thighs cool off.
I had to alter my plan. For me, the most sought after skiing is deep powder. The kind of fresh, pristine untouched snow that you see on Warren Miller moves. Since I knew I wasn’t going to be able to enjoy the moguls and black diamond runs, I decided to go after my next most-favorite activity on the slopes, which is gliding through fresh powder. I knew the snow conditions weren’t favorable for good powder skiing but junkies can usually find some powder stash in the trees. So I took off for the tree covered ridges that often lie on the outskirts of most ski resorts.
I stopped for lunch and had to sit outside because all the inside seats were taken by freezing kids and their freezing mom’s, eating packed lunches and playing Uno. Why pay a gazillion dollars for a ski vacation so you can sit in some sweaty shack on a frigid mountain, just to eat a gross sandwich and play Uno? My lunch consisted of two frozen power bars and sips of Gatorade out of my camel bak. Have you ever tried to bite into a frozen power bar? Don’t. I had to thaw them out in my armpits. Yum.
On the next lift ride after lunch I noticed my brand new $50 gloves had torn at the base of my fingers. They were size XL men’s, but my fingers are so long that they must have stressed the webbing between the fingers and it cracked. I traded them in for a different brand once I got back to the hotel.
I ended up spending most of the rest of Saturday in the trees between a set of blue runs on the backside of Mary Jane, which emptied into Panoramic Express and Sunnyside lifts. I found a big rock face with a snow cornice on top. I thought about jumping off but the landing wasn’t quite right and there were too many trees at the bottom. So I opted for a little plunge off to the side. Saturday ended up a great day, as I completely wore myself out and staggered back to the hotel for some hot tub therapy, dropping my skis off at the shop for an edge grind and a hot wax. Real men get their skis waxed, not body parts. You have to give your skis the spa treatment too!
After soaking with a young, drunk Chicago freight manager and his wife, I ordered a New York strip with rice and baked potato, washed down with a couple of Sharps. I had a slice of coconut cream pie for desert. Back in my room I mindlessly channel surfed until about midnight, but watched several episodes of Ax Men on the History channel.
I slept in until about 9:30 and then hit the breakfast buffet again, going only slightly lighter than the morning before. It had been snowing since I left the slopes the night before and I was looking forward to some good pow. I picked up my skis and bolted straight for the lift, not worrying about another ticket line, (my pass was still good).
Decision time. There was low cloud cover with intermittent sun shinning through, and I couldn’t see the top of the Panoramic Express. I figured it was closed, as it was the whole day before. Panoramic Express is a high speed SIX person lift that takes you to 12,060 feet in nine minutes. The wind up there is ferocious and the snow is usually blasted into a hardened sheet of ice. I think the lift is shut down more often than not. It’s closure was a real bummer because in planning for the trip I had hoped to ski the alphabet chutes, accessible only by Panoramic. Figuring it was still closed, I made my way across the mountain to the Pioneer Express lift, hoping for more pow in the trees over there, plus it would be fun to see a totally different part of the mountain than what I had skied the day before. It took about 40 minutes before I was finally sitting on Pioneer, slowly rising up the mountain. Suddenly, I saw tiny skiing figures above me on the mountain, just under the skyline. The Eagle Wind lift was open, which really surprised me. I figured it would only run concurrently with Panoramic Express, because the only way into the Vasquez Cirque and the valley beneath it is from Panoramic. The Eagle Wind lift simply lifts you back out of the valley so you can go back down to Panoramic to do it over again. This is one my minor peeves: Any time you have to alternate your desired run with two lift rides sandwiching a run to take you to the second lift. It takes three times as long to get you back up to your desired run, compared to just ski down and ride up again.
Since the Eagle Wind Lift was open, I figured Panoramic Express must be open as well. So I skied over to it and rode it up, fortunately the way back over took far less time than it took to get over to Pioneer in the morning. After I got to Panoramic and was riding it, I understood why it was closed half the time. The wind at 12,000 feet is pretty fierce. Sunday when I was there the summit had a -30 degree wind chill! I didn’t wear a mask or anything so my face was a bit frozen. But, I spotted something on the way up that made it all worth it. The west side of Parsenn Bowl was still trackless! My leaped for joy, as I realized I was going to get first tracks and face shots. (Face shots occur when you are turning in deep powder, the snow dislodged by your lower legs shoots up into your face. This never occurs unless the powder is deep enough to hit near your knees.)
After getting off the lift and fighting the gale force winds down the traverse and onto the lower rim of the bowl, I stopped at the crest of the spot I had chosen from the lift. A smooth, untrammeled sheet of snow stretched down the mountain side for about 300 yards in front of me, ending in a line of pines. The traffic had chosen either side of where I stood and most people hit the bottom and veered left into the treeless collector run that funneled people back down to the Panoramic lift. I jumped in. Using the first two turns to figure how wide a stance I needed (depends on how deep the powder is), I then experienced the next 17 seconds of pure ecstasy. Back and forth I went, carefull to keep each turn uniform and well-rounded. The goal is to be able to look back up at your tracks and see a perfectly symmetrical, rounded, back and forth line, not a sharp zig zag or irregular curves, the signs of a novice. I decided not to even stop at the bottom to view my handiwork on nature’s face. I could admire it from the lift. I plunged straight into the trees and continued on, this time using medium-sized pines as slalom poles. Tree skiing powder caches is almost as fun as face shots in a chute or bowl. In the trees you obviously can’t hold symmetrical turns but the real fun is in not plowing into a tree. I stopped every 30 seconds or so to cool off the thighs and catch my breath. I went almost all the way back to the base of Panoramic this way, going slowly on gentler slopes and cutting across steeper slopes until I found trackless snow. My bright yellow skis were usually buried beneath the powder, sometimes turning the surface a slight yellow as they approached the surface of the snow, but not breaking through. Sometimes they’d break through the surface like twin submarines emerging from a calm, white sea. Sending snow sprays back to either side.
It is entirely silent in the trees, except for the sound of the snow. It sounds like fine sugar being poured from a grain mill onto a concrete floor. Imagine thousands of pounds of sugar falling through and piling up. That is what is sounds like as you glide through the powder snow, down through the trees, the sound reverberating off the cold pine trees all around you. This is the kind of skiing I am always searching for. Not the mindless carving back and forth on a groomed run, dodging skiers of all ages as you go.
Needless to say, I had a better day on Sunday! It was a success in every regard. I found the right place to ski, I found the right snow. I repeated the trip up and down Parsenn bowl about 6 times before I began to ski the face of Parsenn bowl. It was the wind-blasted sheet of thick crusty snow, with fine powder swirling and skittering across the top of it in the wind. I enjoyed carving into the crust with my newly sharpened edges, the crust strong enough to hold me up through each turn. I turned harder and harder, going as fast as I dared go. My turns in this “crap” snow were very wide and long due to the speed I carried down the face. The fun in this type of skiing is in the speed, flying across the surface of what looks like a brilliant white moonscape. The snow is blasted into humps and ripples much like a sand dune, and it is a thrilling ride as you cut my way down through it, ignoring the unevenness and variations in the snow as I powered through turn after turn, on my off the exposed face and into softer and deeper, more sheltered snow below.
It was closing in on 1:30 by now and I stopped for lunch at the Lunch Rock, a tiny mountain side cafe, perched at 9,000 feet at the top of Mary Jane. I bought a $10 Chili Breadbowl, a Gatorade to refill my camel bak and a Snickers bar. I ate outside again and the steam from the chill was so thick it made it hard to see where my spoon was digging.
After lunch, I knew I wasn’t going to last much longer. I had a few more good runs and headed back to the hotel. I turned in my rental helmet and hit the jacuzzi. My body was devoid of all energy, I couldn’t bear the thought of hauling my skis up the stairs to my room. For dinner I ate a rare bison prime rib with potato and green beans, no desert. Back in my room I finished reading a book and started another. I watched a little bit of the Olympics and around 10:00 pm decided to drink a Diet Dr. Pepper and eat my Snickers bar!
The next morning I slept in until about 9:30 again and got up, hit the breakfast bar, came back to my room and packed. I waited for the Home James shuttle in the lobby and looked at real estate magazines. Shuttle, airport, home. Great trip. Thanks to my in-laws for a great graduation gift!
