January 9, 2009
It’s another snow day. We woke up this morning to find a winter wonderland outside and the snow was still falling. I would guess that about 5 inches fell overnight. We bundled up for our last day skiing and headed out into the snow. Since we had a day off yesterday, we started out on the Christy Express which goes up the lower part of the mountain. I was a little concerned that after the warm day yesterday, the skiing would be icy, but with all the snow it was fresh powder. In fact on the sides of the slopes it was quite deep. When our skis took us into the embankment, we were about shin deep in the snow. After a couple runs on lower mountain, we got on the gondola to head up to the top to take the 3 mile green trail down the mountain called Why Not. When we got off the gondola, it was almost a complete white out. There seemed to be a little less people on the mountain today and we had a good ski down the mountain. For a change of pace, we had lunch at the base of the mountain at a place called Gondola Pub and Grill where Mark ate on the first day. There was no wait for a table which was nice and we had a glorious meal of hamburgers. The fifth day of skiing this week was taking it out of us and gravity held us to our seats like glue.
Somehow we managed to unstick ourselves and give our table to some other hungry skiers and we went straight up the gondola. It’s colder on the top of the mountain, and the first run down Spur Run to the ski lift was chilly. Plus the snow was falling harder and harder. While on the lift that took us back up the mountain to the gondola we started getting a little buried in snow. =) Not really, but we were covered. We did one more run down Spur Run and Joanna started to take some of the steeper sections. Finally it was time for the last run of the day. On the way back to the gondola we entered even more of a white out than earlier. In fact we could hardly see the building we were headed towards. Joanna took a short blue run that linked up with the green run that Mark was headed on. The blue run didn’t look so intimidating because in the white out I couldn’t see the bottom and see how long and steep it was. Our last ski of the day was through some of the hardest snow we’ve seen yet and Joanna’s hair iced up and froze. We took some pictures of ourselves covered in snow that you can see below.
At the bottom of the mountain the Music Fest that had been going on all week in the evenings was in full swing in the afternoon and we walked through the snow covered crowd and turned in our rented skis and boots. I was very glad to give up those ski boots. Our clunky hiking boots always feel so light and airy after taking off our ski boots. Plus with the hiking books we’ve got a range of motion in our ankles. =) Imagine if we had tennis shoes! To finish off the day we headed to a cafe for a hot cookie each. The hot cookie was about as big as my hand if I made a jazz hand and it was gooey and yummy and hit the spot after all the day’s activity.
The rest of our day was pretty boring as we are just hanging out in the condo watching tv, doing laundry, and being generally lazy. Tomorrow we head out to Yellowstone. We won’t arrive in West Yellowstone until late at night and while in the park we won’t have any internet unless we are really really lucky. So, we’ll go on a posting break and let you know how it all went in a week. We head back to Houston on January 17th. If you can’t see the pictures be sure to visit: http://markandjoannatravel.blogspot.com
