edpaffjr.comKim and I spent the weekend up in the mountains with a rotating cast of others. One of our friends rented a three bedroom condo that we filled with seven to eight people throughout the weekend. We took advantage of a nice spring storm that hit us on Friday, and headed out to Vail on Saturday morning. This was our first time there this season, so we stayed until closing to take full advantage. We met up with a few of our other friends out there and took to the slopes in a mass mob of nine boarders and skiers. After a few runs we split into smaller groups, and the group we were a part of decided to go straight out to blue sky basin.
It takes a few runs to get all the way out to blue sky, but we eventually made it around noon. We were quickly able to find all kinds of powder in some tree runs near Pete’s Bowl. We tried some of the other more open bowls, but found the snow to be too crusty and hard. So we did a few more runs over near Pete’s and then decided to start heading back towards the front side of the mountain. This is always a challenging task, as it takes a number of runs to get anywhere around the massive grounds of Vail. Eventually we made it back to the area where we had started the day, found the rest of our large group, and called it a day.
We all drove back to our condo in Frisco and had some food and drinks at the divey Moose Jaw restaurant. From there it was wine, socializing, and games back at the condo. Kim and I got another early start on Sunday, along with a few others, and headed out for a half day at Keystone. Kim hadn’t been back to Keystone since early in the season, and conditions have vastly improved since then. It still is nothing like a couple of years ago, but at least most of the mountain is open. We had a couple of icy runs to start things off, but quickly found some better runs on the front-side of Dercum Mountain, Frenchman being our favorite. We tried a few runs on the backside slopes, but found it to be mostly icy out there as well. We were able to get ten runs in before 1:30 and decided to call it a day.
I’m not sure if we’ll make it out again anytime soon. The closing dates for the resorts are quickly approaching, with most of the last days in mid April. With that said, I’m sure we’ll have another couple of spring days at Arapahoe Basin and potentially some closing day fun at some of the other resorts. I still have a long way to go to reach twenty days this season, but that can be blamed on the worse than usual conditions. I was glad to have another weekend in the mountains, especially with a really good day at Vail and a typical day at Keystone. Even after seeing so much snow recently, spring is still coming on strong.
