Loveland, Keystone, Vail, and Breckenridge! Pt. 1

While I did not update over vacation, I have been working on the post and finally have it ready to be put online.  We got back from our vacation in Colorado, and while I was away from tri training, the vacation was great. 

I took off on a Tuesday night and drove to Iowa to pick up my father-in-law and spent the night.  We then back tracked through Minnesota and to South Dakota, my first time there, to pick up his son.  The drive started off.  We loaded down the Rav4:

We went from Iowa to Minnesota to South Dakota back to Iowa then to Nebraska and finally Colorado.  We drove through Nebraska vowing not to stop in Grand Island, one of my least favorite places encountered so far in my life.  We stayed on the west side of Denver on Wednesday night and prepared for our first day on Thursday.  We unpacked in the hotel room and hit the hot tub.  It was hot, but shot water up and out rather than any jets actually to massage.  We had a drink while sitting in there and then I got extremely light headed.  I have both driven and flown into Denver and found that driving minimized altitude sickness.  In this case, I am not sure what happened, but I got very light headed and felt like I was going to get sick.  I hydrated up that night and was good to go in the morning, outside of a slight headache due to altitude.

We drove up the mountain into some clouds, thinking it would make for a good day:

Our first day was spent at Loveland.  I had never been to this place, but found some amazing terrain.  Our third run was a double black that was on the peak of the slopes.  My father-in-law had some difficulties initially as he was using some 30 year old Rosi STS 205s.  He slid down the slope and left a ski about 100 yards up the hill.  Luckily there were a few boarders that eventually helped and grabbed his ski and brought it down.

The second picture above shows the whiteout conditions we had towards the end of the day.  Our final run had less than 30 yards visibility and we would be in foot deep powder one second, a clump of blown snow the next, and then on a bare ice patch where the wind had blown it dry.   

We then got to drive through the tunnel and I snapped off a few pictures in the tunnel

We stayed in a hotel again on Thursday night, again with hot tub difficulties.  It had no heat and was warm water at best.    The next day was spent at Vail with some fair snow, but some wicket cat walks that required a lot of poling.  We skid Keystone on Saturday morning and then picked up the girls from the Eagle airport.

Russ and I did some hiking at Vail on Friday finding some foot deep powder, note I am the one in the poop brown suit.  While on this trip we also stimulated the economy a bit and I ended up with a new outfit that is a little easier on the eyes.

 

We were at Keystone on Saturday and Sunday as well, Russ and I hanging around on the lifts, and father-in-law Jeff with his new skis, and my wife looking cute with her new coat!



We spent another 5 days on the slopes, hitting Keystone and Breckenridge. Sunday was the first day of skiing for the girls, and it happened to be three years since my wife and I got engaged, in Colorado on our ski trip.  I had been searching high and low for the perfect gift for her.  A ring for her right hand to replace one she has had since middle school.  I found it only a few days before we took off:

Picture to come soon!

Breckenridge was fun, although we did not enjoy it as much the first time we went there, this time was better.  Jeff and I went up to the top of the peak and did some time in the bowls, dropping in on the ridge:


A few random pictures I snapped with my point and shoot throughout the trip: