TR: 12-20---12/22 A Backyard Adventure
DISCLAIMER: If you’re wondering why this story is so scattered and poorly written…look below. The pict might not look that dramatic but shit could have
gotten real…FAST
“It’ll be like a skiing fast” I told myself as finals week started. I figured I’m technically a full time student, I guess I can act like the part one week a year. For 9 days there was no skiing. I was semi-okay with it. Delayed gratification and my uneasiness of a half way legit GPA made the idea seem okay.
Fast forward to night nine, almost done. The last final was complete at 8:30, and yes, I was the first one done. Two mandatory trips were to be taken immediately, buy beer, and buy burritos so that when Patrick finished his last final, a much harder final, I could be waiting in the hallway with the prize of a burrito and the most expensive canned beer I’ve ever bought.
The deliciousness of the Dales Pale, Chipotle and Respect coupled with a trip to the bars made for a good way to unwind from finals.
The next morning we awoke at about 7AM thinking it’d be a day of softish bumps at Mary Jane. We went to pick up my dog in Littleton and lethargically made it up there…finals had taken it’s toll and it was clear you can only sleep so little in 9 days and still function like normal.
Right away the weather seemed a little crazy and rumors of an upsloping storm had been heard. (upsloping=blizzard for front range some of the time) Thinking a moderate snowstorm for the front range and a bit for places such as Eldora, Loveland and Winter Park we weren’t thinking “pow” for this particular day…especially when the snowforecast.com guy said 5-8 mostly during the afternoon…
Driving Berthoud things started to get sketch and visibility dropped to as little as 20 feet at times.
We finally made it by 11ish and started charging. Holy Shit. This was real. I knew after run one that this day would make the last nine days fade into the distant past.
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The trees were as deep as I’ve seen them at the Jane and the bumps were just plain mellow and fun. It was popcorn.
We skied it till C closed only to find Berthoud closed and over a foot had fallen in Denver. We drove into Fraser to wait it out but it soon became evident that wasn’t going to happen. A state of emergency was declared in Denver due to the snow, the airport shut down and the city came to a grinding halt. I guess I was right where I wanted to be…lucky!
After arriving at the Rocky Mountain Hostel in Fraser (most baller hostel ever) we cooked some pasta, drank some beer and made margs with blizzard snow…fell asleep by about 830…yeah, exhaustion had set in.
We awoke the next day to more snow and about a foot on top of the vehicle. It was one of those days…snow until 9 then sun followed by more snow.
[
goggle change from yesterday...HUGE fogging problems...weird
[
Hugging the snow
me...the landing was way sketchier than it looks from here...
They finally managed to open the roads. We made the trek down to Littleton again to shovel/snowblow (negative man points) my parents out of the storm.
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Arrived back in Boulder late…only to find that all the burrito places ran out of food/never opened. Oh well, time to eat last nights leftovers.
]
The following day (today) we figured we’d shred Boulder. Mr. Yogi the dog charged hard as we skied the star into Boulder.
We came back for some food then figured we’d go ski sugarloaf…somewhere when out of nowhere THIS happened.
Pat wasn’t going too fast, not being stupid…just bad luck. Sun got low, Boulder Canyon iced up and we spun into oncoming traffic then careened off the side of a ravine. The Canyon closed for over an hour as a tow came in to get us. We were lucky as shit. The “tree” (more like an overgrown bush) that saved us barely did so, had we gone through it, it was a solid 60-100 feet down to the river bed where God knows what would have happened. Picts don’t look that bad but it was close…really close.
Look, there is the Star we shredded...that's what all the metal poles were doing in those photos...
