Last Day at Breck

Breckenridge's last day of skiing is today (Sunday).  To celebrate, we decided to try for one more day on the mountain.  I think Bode's first time skiing was at ski-school back in February of 2011.  It is hard to believe he's been skiing for over five years :-)  But that's a bit misleading, as he didn't start his "serious" skiing until January of 2013.  He is now a Level 5 skier, and I'm sure there are some characteristics somewhere that describe what this means.  He's starting to do hockey-stops (skidding to a halt), and there are bits and pieces of parallel turns as he goes down the mountain.  He's better when his right-leg is his downhill leg; when his left-leg is the downhill leg, he resorts to some snowplowing.  All in all, he is doing fantastic, finishing the year with close to 85,000 vertical feet.  Ashley beat us all with almost 120,000 vertical feet.  I show 80,000 vertical feet, but I did spend a day at A-basin, which lacks the necessary RFID equipment to track this oh-so-important statistic.  And I don't really want to burst Bode's ego and tell him I'm closer to 95,000, because he thinks he skied more than me, and it's always fun when you beat Daddy (Bode and Mommy took two "sick days" from school/work and went skier while I slaved away earning money to fund these little trips).  

We took a few pictures to commemorate the end of the season.  The weather was nice--almost too nice, as the warm weather tends to create slushy conditions, which then ice-over, creating very icy skiing at the start of the day.  Still, it is late April and we were skiing, so I shouldn't complain.  First we have a nice picture of Bode and Mommy.

Next, a couple shots of Bode and me.

We skied for a few hours, and then it started to get too crowded, as many people were trying to get in some final runs, and a lot of the mountain was already shut down.  We all agreed we had a great ski season and are looking forward to next year, so much so that we've already purchased our season passes.  We ate lunch at Downstairs at Eric's, played our usual game of Pacman War, and then Bode and I had a thrilling skeet-ball contest.  I think he beat me 2-1, but the best part was we each earned a free game.  Bode scored an amazing 380 points, and I did him 20 points better.  Neither of us realized you got a free game if you get more than 350 points, so we were pretty stoked  (Editor's note:  A game costs $0.25, so we aren't sure why Jeff is making such a big deal about saving fifty cents, especially when they just spent $30 on lunch.)

We lounged around the house the rest of the day, reading, playing games, and watching Marvel: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D on TV.  Ashley and Joey are couch hogs (you can see Harley's head to the right of the round table).

Bode has five more weeks of school, and then he's a third-grader.  Hard to believe...Pleasant week to all.

Jeff's Day Off

USAFA didn't have classes scheduled for 1 April.  A friend (Nick) and I decided to use this rare weekday off during the school (ski) year to hit the slopes at A-Basin.  I left the house at 0545, met up with Nick at 0600, and we were in the parking lot at 0800.  Lifts didn't open until ~0900, so we had a little time to kill.  But killing time is so much easier when you are already at the lifts vice being stuck in traffic.

We had an incredible day.  The weather was spotty--in some pictures, it will look like it was bad, but in reality, it was quite pleasant.  No real wind except at the top of the bowls, and the intermittent sun made it nice in that we didn't get sunburned.  Here are some photos and movies.  First, Nick ready to go.

I tried taking a selfie, and then Nick took a picture of me.  Most of the pictures are at the top of or in the middle of the back bowls of A-Basin--some great ski terrain.

The skiing was great.  Nick really likes the bowls, and I was happy to ski them with him.  The favorite place to drop in was a shoot called Jump.

I had to include the above picture as proof to Bode that his Daddy was skiing on the dreaded "double black diamonds."  Looking down into the bowl was a rather intimidating action--the grade didn't look very steep from the chairlift, but when looking down from the precipice, it's hard to think the drop is anything but straight down.

I took some good movies of Nick (he took one of me, but it's on his phone; if I get it, I'll be sure to post it...but maybe not because I fall at the end of the run :-)  This first movie shows the little jump we had to do when we dropped in.

Next is a funny one of Nick.  There's no skiing involved--I just wanted to get a video of him looking for his skies after a spectacular crash.  Note my heavy breathing--skiing at 13,000 feet is exhausting.

Finally, another good crash of Nick.  We realized anytime we took a video, we crashed.  Thus, we stopped taking movies and just skied :-)

I got a couple of good action shots of Nick--still photos seemed to not have the crash jinx.

Note the lack of skiers in the pictures.  We had an amazing day--hardly any people were skiing the bowls.  At some point, I snapped a picture of the two of us.

I've spoken to Ashley about letting me ski every Friday during ski season; not sure if this request was well received :-)  Pleasant weekend to all.