Skication

For the past couple of years we have treated ourselves to a skiing vacation with the ski club we belonged to prior to our retirement mountain move.  Last year we came out to Colorado and skiied Snowmass.  This year's trip is also to Colorado to Beaver Creek.  They have had much lower than normal snowfall this year, the base is low and concerned for the season.  The weather system that tormented the country yesterday, gave them what they have been waiting for in the form of a foot of snow, but it is very sticky.  We almost didn't get here.

Our flight from Norfolk left at 7 a.m. meaning a get up time before 4 to meet the group traveling together at the airport shortly after 5 a.m.  It was raining in Norfolk and the flight to Atlanta was bumpy and rough.  We arrived in the air over Atlanta early and were put in a holding pattern for 45 minutes and then allowed to land.  They were experiencing severe thunderstorms and tornado warnings, so there we sat for 4 hours.  Finally, our flight left for Denver, not  bad leg of the journey, until we got to the luggage carosel which did not want to feed our bags up onto the level where we could collect them. Four flights of people mostly going skiing clustered around one broken down carosel trying to get many oversized, overstuffed suitcases.  Finally all 35 of us were collected with no missing bags.  Loaded on the bus and off we head for Beaver Creek.  We weren't even out of the airport when the trip leader realized we were 1 person short, so back to the airport, cell phone calls and 3 other trippers looking for this man, we finally set out again, group in tact.

Just as  the bus got to where the interstate started its climb into the mountains, we drove into the winter storm.  We made it through the pass before they closed it down, the bus slip slid up to the condo units we had rented and we unloaded in a foot of new sticky snow. Total travel time was 18 hours.

 It continued to snow lightly all night and until noon.  My hubby and I ventured out early to the rental shop to get our skiis and back in time to head out with his sister to try this moutain out.  I have never skiied in deep sticky snow before and it did nothing to instill my confidence in my ability.  The first run, we stuck to a green and easy blue slope, venturing to a different blue on the second run.  It took us over an hour to get down that time.  My very confident skier hubby wasn't doing so well.  We went inside for lunch and decided to call our first day at the halfway point.

Our condo was advertised as ski in/ski out, it isn't, the shuttle service from the village to our condo area is slow.  Hopefully the week will improve, right now, I'm not impressed.