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!

Over the weekend Kim and I participated in a hut trip hike.   If you recall from last year, I went on a similar trip and loved every minute of it.   This time our group of 14 hiked up to the Section House up on Boreas Pass.   This year’s trip was much easier than last, even if we wouldn’t have gotten lost last year.   This year the trailhead was at 10,350′ compared to 8,620 last year.   And the hut was at 11,481′ this year and 11,180 last.   So you can tell by the elevation gain that it was a slightly uphill hike, but not very strenuous.   In fact, the route we took was along a gravel road that is open in the warmer months, and it used to be a railroad, so the grade is very low.   Despite that, the hike still managed to deliver blisters and sore bones.   I guess this will always happen after hiking six and a half miles.   We had a great time though, and look forward to possibly taking a trip to a hut in the summer.

Boreas Pass on Dwellable

Prior to the fun of last weekend, I had a 10:30pm hockey game on Friday night.   Normally my games are fun and a nice break from the work week, but playing this late on a weekend night was a downer.   Not to mention that despite our best efforts, we still came up short with a very close loss.   The team was happy to have at least won a game in the playoffs, but still we should have won this game as well.   With the loss our season came to an end.   We’ve called it quits until sometime around Memorial Day, when we will take the ice with new uniforms and improved focus.   The upstairs bar at the rink is sponsoring our team by giving us a free team pitcher after each game (a $20+ value).   It doesn’t take much to bribe our team.

My hockey team finally won a game!   I missed the last two games while in Arizona, but the team still managed to lose both games.   The second game was the first for our team in the playoffs.   After that loss, we had our second game in the double-elimination tournament last night.   Had we lost again, our season would have been over.   We managed to have the lead for most of the game last night, and with a last-minute empty netter we won 6-4.   The bad thing is that we now play at 10:30 on Friday night.   I couldn’t think of a much worse game time.

I am back from sunny Arizona sunburnt, sore, and a year older than before. To celebrate my 30th birthday Kim and I flew to Phoenix and met up with my parents and brother. From there we were on a long weekend tour of the Grand Canyon, Sedona, and Phoenix areas as well as all stops in between. Along the way we hiked, mountain biked, off-roaded, ate great food, and drank good beer.   One of my favorite adventures was hiking in the Grand Canyon. I had never been there before so seeing it at sunset upon our arrival was amazing but nothing can top hiking into it. I had done my research and everything I read said not to attempt hiking down to the Colorado River and back to the rim in one day. I’m assuming that in the summer this can be extremely exhausting due to high temperatures.

Before leaving I talked to a friend who had hiked to the river and back and he said it is definitely doable. My plan was to start on a ranger guided hike on the South Kaibab trail that would go a mike and a half down the trail and to take it from there. Well this hike isn’t actually offered until the summer months. Instead everyone in our group started hiking the trail, with me leading, just after eight in the morning.

As we descended down the South Kaibab the view got better and better. When we reached the mile and a half turnaround, Cedar Ridge, we decided to continue on down the trail. Shortly after we ran into an older couple who said the were going down to the river and back up another trail, Bright Angel. They told us they had done it before and it took only nine hours or so. This is much quicker than the guidebooks say.   I had always wanted to touch the river and go back but was afraid that we didn’t have enough time on this trip. Once I heard their estimated time, I was all for it. Everyone else really liked the idea of doing it and so we hiked down with a new goal!

After around three and a half hours of hiking we had reached the suspension bridge that crosses the Colorado. We crossed and actually went down to the river and felt the frigid water. We took a short break to eat some food and fill our waters and were on our way up shortly afterward.   The hike up started pretty steep. We knew the South Kaibab was steeper than the Bright Angel, but we also knew it was around three miles shorter. We may have started the first set of switchbacks with too much speed, which led to a few extra rests and some tired family members.

Eventually after another four hours of hiking we were all standing back at the top of the Grand Canyon. We had all made it down and back! I was so proud of everyone and so happy that I was able to accomplish this. With stops included, it took us nearly eight hours exactly to hike the 13.5 round-trip miles. It was a hike that I’ll never forget.   Pictures and more adventures coming soon.

Kim 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.

Frisco on Dwellable

Despite a couple of wins thrown into the mix, my hockey team continues to lose most games.   Since a win three weeks ago, we’ve gone on to lose 9-1 and 9-5 in the last two weeks.   Even with our 5-11 record, we are only a couple of points from moving out of last place.   Fortunately our last two games are against the second and third worst teams in the league.   We actually have a chance to improve in the standings before heading into the playoffs.   We all realize that the playoffs are what really matters, but if we can move out of last and get a better seed for the tournament we might actually stick around for awhile.   It wouldn’t be the first time my team has miraculously improved heading into and through the playoffs.

I’m happy to report that the conditions at Keystone have greatly improved since the beginning of the season.   I’m still not sure that they are operating at 100% open, but it’s close.   I headed up on Saturday morning with my friend Rob.   We arrived plenty early, and were one of the first few out on the slopes.   We immediately headed out to the Outback and eventually found ourselves hiking out to the North and South bowls.   On our second run out there we hit some nice powder that was nearly knee-deep.   By the time we made it out there again, others had found the stash as well, so it wasn’t as good.   Rob is a good skier and we were quickly able to move through the runs and beat many of the crowds.   Once the Outback became too crowded, we headed back toward the other mountains.   We hiked out to The Windows area, which I had never been on before.   We were able to find lots of snow, but the run we picked was too filled with trees to truly enjoy all the snow.   After that exhausting run, we were ready to head out and beat the traffic back home to Denver, besides we had already got in about ten solid runs.

Team USA men’s hockey team just had a huge win and is now in the gold medal game on Sunday.   They will face-off with either Canada or Slovakia, who play in three and half hours from now.   I’ll try to watch the game tonight, but will definitely be tuned into the final game on Sunday.   I watched the end of the women’s game last night, where the Canadian women beat team USA 2-0 to take the gold medals.   Today everyone is all upset about the celebration the players had after most of the crowd had left the arena.   Fourteen players returned to the ice with beer, champagne, and cigars.

I really don’t think it’s that big of deal, though smoking cigars on the ice seems pretty strange.   There is a poll on nbcolymics.com and currently the vote is split right down the middle whether the celebration went to far or not.   The only thing I thought was really strange was that some of the players appears to be drinking Coors Light.   Not that there’s anything wrong with that finely made Colorado product, but shouldn’t they all be having Molson’s or Labatt’s?   What do you all think, did they take it too far or should we just let them have their fourteen minutes of fame?

In addition to my curling addiction, I’ve tried to keep up with as much of the Olympic hockey action as I possibly can. Fortunately, nbcolympics.com has a very nice Silverlight player that is available for streaming lots of live events, especially hockey and curling. I was able to follow along with the USA hockey game this afternoon, even if I only listened to the audio most of the time. The really cool thing is that the video player seems to automatically adjust the quality based on your connection. So rather than dropping out and buffering the video, it can simply display a lower bit-rate and then automatically switch to a higher one when the connection improves. I’m not really too familiar with Silverlight, but this feature seems really desirable compared to current flash video players.