My First Ski Vacation

Yes, even though I have lived in Colorado for almost 15 years, I have never actually spent an entire weekend in the mountains on a ski vacation. Mainly that’s because I haven’t enjoyed skiing until last year. Not sure what changed but I tried skiing again last season and got out about four times with friends who were nurturing and instructive. Lo and behold, I enjoyed it!

So last weekend we packed up Dempsey in the car and drove to Steamboat Springs for a three-day weekend of skiing and a tiny bit of snowshoeing!

On the way into Steamboat Springs, we stopped on Rabbit Ears Pass and snowshoed a short 3.7-mile loop that has no snowmobilers and is reserved for skiers and snowshoers. It was a gorgeous day – sunny and warmish, well, it was still cold but while snowshoeing we were only in long sleeved base layers and vests (and pants…).

Dempsey loved the snow. He jumping into it flopping full-body into fluffy piles that came up to his chest. He buried his head and wriggled around. He ran up and back the trail. It was fun to watch.

Saturday and Sunday were the main ski days. However, Saturday it was actually snowing, which you’d think is a good thing. Unfortunately, it made the light kind of flat and in turn, made it hard to see the lay of the land. There were also clouds and fog throughout the mountain, so visibility wasn’t great in general. What’s more, I’m not exactly a seasoned skier and I’ve never skied in fresh snow in a significant quantity and I didn’t quite know how to navigate this kind of snow. It turns out that there aren’t that many green runs at Steamboat and the ones they have are kind of boring. The blues on the other hand are harder than I’m used to – full of bumps and a bit steep. I only lasted about half the day…we did do quite a few runs in that time though.

Here are some photos from Saturday that give some idea of the conditions:

We spent the afternoon napping and watching bad TV in the hotel room. Dempsey even got to have some quality bed time:

The evening was spent getting drinks and snacks at Laundry in downtown Steamboat and walking around in the snow checking out the snow sculptures. Laundry is a cool little place that is in a historic laundry building and they serve yummy cocktails. We even tried one of their house-infused whiskeys – maple syrup slim jim whiskey.

Since Denver hasn’t received much snow, being in a snowstorm in Steamboat was quite nice – it was like traveling to a winter planet.

Then there were the snow sculptures. I think they were done as part of the Winter Festival that was going on. I got this shot of a dolphin snow sculpture – that’s right a dolphin in the landlocked place of snow.

In contrast to Saturday, Sunday was fabulous. It was sunnier and from my brief experience with the snow the day before, I was able to work with the snow a bit more. Also, it snowed most of the night and there was a bunch of fresh powder! All in all, I had a much, much better ski day on Sunday even though I did fall a good number of times…

We were in the car and headed back for Denver by 2:30 pm but we didn’t arrive home until 7:30. Yep, I-70 traffic added two hours to the normally three hour trip. This was our view for a good chunk of the drive back:

Once again, Seth and Dempsey were wonderful travel partners and my first ski vacation was a success!