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Sunday, March 11, 2007

Now I Have to Apologize to Utah?

Sorry, Melissa. Once I start paying for the ski trips, I might pick the destination. It is ironic that Dad and I went to Park City a few years in a row while you were living in California. Don't be sad. We'll always have Buffy. Remember the good times.

This year we went to Telluride to ski which turned out to be quite a treat. It's in a box canyon, so we were surrounded by mountains. I managed to lug my camera on the trip with me, despite all the extra luggage required for skiing. I even risked the camera by bringing it up on the mountain with me on the last day of skiing. It could have ended badly. Here's a sample. Click on the photo to get to the rest of the images on flickr.

Oh, and the skiing was fantastic, too. There was fresh snow from the week before when daily highs were hitting, say, seventeen degrees. We, however, timed everything just right to hit the first week of real spring skiing. Five out of six days were clear and windless and relatively warm. Telluride doesn't get a lot of wind, in general, which makes the temperature change from bottom of the mountain to top much more tolerable. It snowed on Thursday, so we had a day of extra exercise and alternate technique. Tuesday and Thursday were my best days. By Friday, my knees wouldn't let me trust myself to stick to the fall line. Ironically, turning on the fall line would have been a lot less work. You do have the benefit of gravity helping you down the hill, assuming you're confident you can stop at any point. Luckily, Telluride doesn't get a lot of crowds except around Christmas and New Year's. Therefore, there weren't a lot of people on the slopes to avoid. Telluride also has several slopes of my favorite difficulty level: double blue. That plus all the fine dining is what made it a vacation.

Labels: buffy, snow skiing, travel