Yesterday Kim and I attended closing day at Vail, just as we did last year. We did about three of four slush-filled runs throughout the day, but that was okay as there was so much other stuff going on as part of the Spring Back to Vail celebration. We witnessed the large season ending party at the top of the mountain, the pond skimming competition, and finally a Guster concert in Vail Village. Many in the crowd had costumes on, or retro ski gear, and many were openly enjoying beers, champagne, etc. Nothing seen during this wild day can be unexpected.

The Pond Skimming competition

The Guster show was great!  The weather was perfect and the crowd was very well behaved.  It wasn’t a large turnout, but there were plenty of people packed in close to enjoy the concert.  We were able to get fairly close to the stage and had a great view, despite a couple of trees.  I really enjoyed this show after having their last performance at the Mile High Music Festival nearly ruined by some obnoxious neighboring music.  The sounds was good enough, though the band complained a couple of times about the elevation messing up their equipment.  They even made up a rather funny impromptu song about the downside of being so many feet above the sea.  We had a great time and it was a good close to the season.

Guster playing Spring Back to Vail

With most resorts closed, here are our stats from this past snowboarding season.  As always, we will likely add a couple of days at Arapahoe Basin as the spring moves forward.

• Breckenridge – 5 days
• Vail – 3 days
• Keystone – 3 days (Kim missed one of these)
• Beaver Creek – 2 days
• Copper – 2 days

That’s a total of only 15 days, which is pretty close to last year, but not nearly as good as two years ago.  Once again, the snow left a lot to be desired this year.  The best days of the season were only a couple of weeks ago and most of our enjoyable days have been in the warmer months of this year.  Still we had many good memories and lots of fun times with visitors throughout the year.  Here’s to next season!