Skiing: 2011-2012

Much to Matt's disappointment, ski season is over. In fact, it's been over for a few weeks. We had a pretty crummy winter and an early spring, which was quite the opposite of the amazing 2010-2011 season. Sadly, there will be no skiing in July this year. But despite the not-so-great conditions, we were still able to get in quite a few days - and even a couple of powder days. Because all ski pictures start to look the same, I thought I'd save them all up for one massive 2011-2012 skiing post.

Matt started the year with a couple of early season A-Basin trips, but I decided to wait for the real snow... or at least slightly better snow. The first couple of weekends together, we went to Keystone. It was still limited terrain and long lines, but the conditions weren't too bad. And we even went night skiing!

Week 1 at Keystone.

While I'm a pretty ok skier now, I still enjoy resting every now and then.

Week 2 at Keystone. Long lines, but pretty views.

My first time night skiing.

Dave, our friend who works with Matt, no longer lives in Colorado, but he had to get a four-pack to use when he came back on business. So when he was in town, we spent a couple of weekends at A-Basin. One of them became the Official Corona Insights (Matt's work) Ski Day... with me tagging along. Luckily, Matt works with pretty cool people, so I didn't mind hanging out with these folks for the day.

The Corona Crew.

Hanging out at the "beach" of A-Basin.

After some skiing, we made our way to another resort - but we left our skis/board in the car. We went to Breck to watch the men's snowboarding half-pipe finals of the Dew Tour. It was pretty cool to be really close to all the crazy tricks. Plus, I got to stand 10 feet away from Shawn White!

All the gear left behind as people stopped skiing and became spectators of the big event.

Half-pipe! And Todd's fist??

We had a little big of a hard time keeping our footing on the slip hill, but seeing Shawn White's HUGE air right in front of us made it worth it.

Since we didn't have our skis with us, we had to find a more creative way to make it back down the mountain. Meredith and I slid... kind of. It was really more like falling, skidding one foot, and stopping. But fun, nonetheless!

Whee!

Keystone was pretty much our destination of choice this year, and we went there more than any other resort. We were able to have a lot more fun there because I'm finally comfortable enough to explore the back side. Woohoo!

The side of Keystone I hadn't seen before.

Being awesome at Keystone.

It's very pretty on the back side.

While we were able to have some pretty good ski days, it wasn't until we went to Idaho in February that we got our first powder day of the season. We went up to Pullman, Washington to visit Dave and Katie in their new home (more about that trip in another post), and Dave had to take us to his local ski resort. It was pretty small, but had some cool areas. Matt loved this glade, especially because of all the fresh powder:

Enjoying the snow.

Being my first day ever skiing in powder, I had no idea what I was doing. I felt like I was fresh out of ski school all over again, which was quite disappointing. But it's always fun to play in fresh snow, so I just stayed on the greens and enjoyed it.

Matt and I have recently decided that we'd like to ski more of the resorts in Colorado. To start checking some off our list, we made our way to Vail (Matt had been, but I hadn't) and Sol Vista (new for both of us). I LOVED Vail because there was SO much terrain to explore. We could ski the whole day and never do the same run twice. It was awesome.

Skiing Vail.

Pretty pretty.

Sol Vista was pretty much the opposite of Vail. The only have two lifts, and their conditions were pretty bad because it was later in the season. But we went on Matt's birthday, so he got to ski for free!

Lots of dirt visible, but Matt still found a big hill to conquer.

To finish the season, we went to Breck on the last day they were open. While it was nice that it wasn't crowded at all, the snow was pretty slushy. But slushy skiing is better than no skiing, so we enjoyed it while we could.

Last Day at Breck.

So, that's it. An entire season of skiing in one (very long) post. Now that I've shown you all these pictures, I'm sure you wondering how I've progressed over the season. No? Well, I'll tell you anyway. I can now do pretty much any groomed run! Hooray! Steep black hills make me nervous, but I just take my time and I make it down fine. Next, I need to work on bumps and powder. Only five more months until next season!

Winter Randoms

Winter has always been my least favorite season. I'm usually ok with the cold weather as we head into the holidays because it puts me in a cozy mood, but then I pretty much think winter should just end. Since Matt and I started skiing and snowshoeing, I've been able to tolerate the cold months a little more. In fact, skiing and snowshoeing (though mostly skiing) are really the most fun things we do in the winter (see upcoming blog post with ALL our fun skiing pictures for the entire season). But we managed to throw in a couple other mini events over the last few months.

1. We've been pretty big fans of the Discovery show Mythbusters for years, so the thought of seeing Mythbusters Live: Behind the Myths was pretty exciting for us. Of course, we really had no idea what to expect from a live version of a show that usually blows up at least one thing each episode. Sadly, there were no giant explosions during the show, and the whole thing was a little weird...


Basically, the whole thing was just very gimmicky. No real myths were tested and it was mostly demonstrations of basic physics. I imagine the show would be really awesome to most of the kids at my schools, and in fact, there were lots of young'uns there having a blast. What made it a little odd was that it wasn't marketed as a kids' show and they didn't completely buy in to the geared-to-kids idea. Instead, it felt like a weird meld between something for adults and something for children.

But I got to stand two feet away from Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage, so that's super cool.

Jamie and Adam doing silly things.

Yay Mythbusters!

It was still a fun night, and we're still completely in love with Mythbusters.

2. There's usually some sort of Super Bowl gathering in my family each year, and it's frequently hosted by us. As usual, I failed at taking pictures of anything other than the food. But it was just another football-watching party, and you know what watching football looks like.

My food was rather delicious, if I do say so myself. It included bacon-wrapped smokies, pretzel bites, jalapeno popper dip, guacamole, corn dog muffins, and brown-butter rice krispie treats. Plus some frozen chicken wings and fruit salad.

Yum.

My husband would hate to hear me say this, but I can't even remember who won the game. I spent most of the time eating and talking. So it was a pretty good day.

3. As I'm sure you've seen on my blog before, my dad is in an Eagles tribute band called The Long Run. We like to get out to see him play every now and then, so a while back we went out to see a show at Nissi's, a restaurant/concert venue. Other family members were there, too, so it was a fun time.

Talking, dancing, and acting crazy.

Dad playing.

4. And finally, it wouldn't be winter without at least a little snowshoeing. Our snow was so bad this year so we didn't get out much, but we managed to get in one good snowshoe up Squaw Mountain.

There it is! We had a little bit of a climb ahead of us.

It was a super windy day, as many of our days have been this year. Because it was a summit hike, there were some points where we were pretty exposed to the giant gusts. It was crazy!

On the hike. Someone lost their car under all the snow!

Pretty views from the top. We somehow managed to not get blown away!

We had a couple of other fun things going on this winter (posts coming soon), but mostly just lots of skiing (that post coming soon, too). And now winter is over. Hooray! Bring on spring!