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Published: January 28th 2008
It had been a long week at work and I was very much looking forward to a break. One of the first signs I saw at the airport was "Aspen welcomes your mind, body and spirit." Amen.
This was my first "traditional" vacation.... I don't count the time off between my first two jobs. This one I actually used "vacation" time to go to some spellbinding locale and knock around for awhile
It took two connections (Chicago and Denver) to reach Aspen on Friday, January 18th. It was night when I flew in. The descent towards the airport was rapid... their was one particular drop where I could feel the bottom falling out... also, on approach I watched the mountains in the distance... and as we descended and moved closer the airport, much closer snow covered mountains jumped into view. It was a welcome intro to let me know I was in the Rocky Mountains.
Luke and his brother, Adam, picked me up from the airport. Adam works in Aspen and Luke invited me out to go skiing/snowboarding. Adam has a studio apartment on a mountainside with good views of the surrounding terrain.
The first night there
We hung out a bit, watched some TV, ate, and went to bed early. I think I slept nine or ten hours... maybe the longest and best sleep in a month or so. And a great way to kick off a vacation and prepare for some great snowboarding. 😊 One of the unfortunate things, though, was that Adam had to work while we were there, so he didn't go skiing/snowboarding with us.
For me and snowboarding, you can reference back a little over a year to a travel blog post from Heavenly in the Sierra Nevada... where I took a beating trying to learn snowboarding (getting beat up the first two or three times snowboarding is a common theme I hear from most people who have learned how to snowboard). I also had a chance to practice more a few months later at a ski resort in KC with my parents. So, while I had learned a little about how to snowboard, I still was struggling. However, I had Luke there to give me advice and help improve.
The first day we went to Snowmass... which has the largest ski area of the four mountains... in short it
is MASSIVE. How massive? Try 3,132 acres, a 4,406 vertical rise, 91 trails combining for 147 miles with the longest run measuring 5.3 miles. It is big.
http://www.aspensnowmass.com/ -- All four mountains are owned by the same company and a lift ticket is good for all four.
Getting to Snowmass was a little tricky since Adam had gone to work early that morning (taking with him his four wheel drive truck). He had asked the babysitter to drive us down the mountain to the Intercept Lot so that we could take a bus in, however, she had a flat tire; the day before she had had studded tires installed on her car so she could more easily drive around the snow/ice covered mountain roads. We searched through the garage and eventually found a tire inflator and, since it was a slow leak, we were soon on our way.
At the slopes, I bought my lift ticket and rented a board and boots.
I got off to a much better start than expected, though I fell often. Luke gave me advice along the way and I improved... though, for some reason, I initially favored a goofy (right
foot forward) stance... not sure why but snowboarding with my right foot forward initially felt more comfortable. However, my board was set up for a left foot forward stance and I eventually got the hang of it. And after lunch I was soon coasting down the mountain making the familiar "S" pattern while going from edge to edge of the board and leaning my body forward and backwards.
Snowboarding and skiing are pretty physical, and by lunchtime we were very hungry and thirsty. We found an awesome pizza place (I think it is called "Up 4 Pizza") on the slopes to chow down... and the price was very reasonable for on-slope dining; with two bottled waters, two big slices of great pizza, and two cookies (unusually good cookies that were baked in the pizza oven) it cost $25.
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After snowboarding for about three more hours, we went back to the Intercept Lot (using the bus lines) where Adam picked us up. We cleaned up and chilled for a couple of hours. We were hungry again. We decided to go into town. Adam invited the babysitter next door to go with us in town for dinner (a
graduated from college, worked for awhile, and taking-time-off-while-figuring-out-what-to-do kind of babysitter... just to clarify 😉. We ended up going to a Mexican restaurant called La Cantina -- http://www.cantina-aspen.com/. Mexican food is one of my favorites, as are margaritas (we ordered a pitcher), so it was a good meal. 😊 Great time hanging out. Walking through Aspen along the snow lined sidewalks in the frigid air at night with great friends was something in the category of "bests".
That night I had another solid nine or ten hours of sleep. Amen x2.
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Okay, the second day on the slopes I declared as my skiing day (I know how to ski well, and didn't want to miss out on that, too). For this day, we decided to go to Aspen Highlands, which is a third of the size of Snowmass but has great trails (all four mountains do, but in somewhat different ways). With me skiing, Luke and I could both take on the black diamonds, for which we took full advantage. 😊 Another great thing about this day was the beautiful blue skies (the previous day had been overcast) and the relative warmth (27 degrees, I think).
After a few runs of getting back in the groove of skiing, I was eager to take on more challenging runs. At first I wasn't enjoying it as much as snowboarding, but with each new journey down the slopes I settled in and increasingly enjoyed the advantages of skiing.
Luke and I could charge down the mountain almost as fast as we wanted and mostly wherever we wanted, though I usually preferred to take my time and enjoy the scenery... coast through the woods... explore a bit going from slope to slope. Also, with skis it was less difficult to go through narrow trails winding through the woods.
For lunch, I think we went to the Soup Bowl at Cloud Nine. However, it wasn't as good as Up 4 Pizza and it cost about twice as much (though, we did order more than we could eat).
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Later in the day we were cruising down the mountain and arrived at a double-black diamond run (the highest rating they had). We stopped and analyzed it for a bit and then decided not to take it on; it was a steep and rough drop... lots of moguls
and narrow areas... and we couldn't see the bottom... but we could see it drop off ahead of us and then see just trees in the far distance. We skied/snowboarded on.
At the bottom of the hill Luke called Adam and figured we had enough time for one more run. We went almost all the way to the top and started back down. We decided to meet at the bottom instead of keeping up with each other in order to venture around to our hearts' content.
After skiing around here and there I arrived back at the same double black diamond trail. I was probably not going to attempt it until I saw a ski class of children... maybe around age 10... taking on the initial and very narrow part of it which wound through the forest before steeply dropping off. 😊 They were all lined up and each one took their turn sliding out of sight into the woods... and then about 10 seconds later they would spring out of the woods about 30 yards away... there was a little dip that they would hit just before coming out of the trees and which would quickly ramp
them up about two feet of air.
I talked to the nearby ski instructor about the run and she informed me that right before the dip I had to duck under a low tree branch... and other than that I should be okay.
The trail was something else... fast and winding... it was a lot of fun and I did have to duck quite a bit while also readying for the dip and jump... I hit it and caught the most air I had that day. It was exhilarating. Of course, that was the *beginning* of the trail. I don't think the children took on the rest of it.
On my way down I fell four or five times. It was very steep and I took great care not to lose control. It was hard for me to turn since every time I did I quickly picked up speed. But I made it down. My first double black diamond!! 😉
That night I think we watched a movie and then, yes, I got over eight hours of sleep. Three nights in a row... astounding. Even with my body a little beat up, I was feeling well.
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The third day we thought "Hey, we've gone to two of the mountains already, why not go for all four!". So, we went to both Aspen Mountain ("Ajax") and Buttermilk (where the X-Games are held) to round our Tour de Aspen. And after a day of skiing, it was back to working on my snowboarding skills.
Ajax overlooks Aspen itself (the other mountains are further down valley). And on this day it was snowing moderately, so we were able to take advantage of the fresh powder (though not a lot of new snow, maybe three or four inches, but enough to make the runs more fun and engaging).
Whether it was the change in board, the sore muscles, or skiing throwing me off, I had more difficulty early on than on the first day. In fact, I had trouble even staying up. Not helping was all of the black diamonds we kept hitting as, ahem, I was following Luke down the hill... really, though, it was mainly by accident as it was difficult to tell which trails led where... it was snowing and the trails didn't seem as clearly marked as the other mountains.
So, the first time down I got beat up. I must of fell over a dozen times and sometimes exceptionally hard. One of the things I try to avoid when snowboarding is catching falls with my hands since a lot of snowboarders break their wrists doing that. And usually it leads to a much softer landing. However, on one of the falls I pulled my arms in and my elbow got jammed into my ribs when I hit the ground -- and it HURT. At first I thought I might have broken a rib, then I thought maybe a heavy bruise. Now, after almost a week and some research on the Internet, I think I may have fractured three ribs -- basically the bones hurt when pressed upon, it is sometimes painful to breath deeply or twist my body around, laughing hurts, and sneezing is sharply painful. At any rate, I went on to fall on the same spot two more times throughout the day... surely not helping the condition.
(Note: I will probably schedule a visit to a physician this week, however, there is little to do for fractured ribs beyond taking it easy on them for a
month or so in order to let them heal.)
So, Luke analyzed my snowboarding technique and identified that I was overcompensating on my turns; when I went to turn, instead of letting the board flow with the snow I was pulling my back leg around, which was causing the front edge to catch more and often cause me to fall. I took his advice and improved. Though, it felt counterintuitive... I felt like I needed to do more and, at the time, with my ribs hurting and my body already sore and beat up, I was afraid to kind of flow with the terrain and the board. Still, I pressed through that fear and fell much less frequently the rest of the day.
Snowboarding is one of the most enjoyable and sports I've ever tried. It flows so well and feeling my body soar down the hill -- at one moment gliding on the inside edge along the mountain... occasionally so close I can reach out and touch the snow, and then turning -- flowing -- the other way and leaning back while carving out the "S" pattern on the mountainside.
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For lunch we went
to Buttermilk and ate at The Cliffhouse, which features a make-your-own Mongolian grill; we picked out a number of vegetables and fruits, put them in a bowl, picked a meat, picked a sauce, and then watched them fry it up for us on a large circular grill. I used chopsticks to pick it apart... it was quite a savory dish (I had spinach, apricot, pineapple, mushrooms, broccoli, water chestnuts, beef, and I think a few other things... all fried together with rice on the side).
We then hit the slopes of Buttermilk, which are more moderate than Ajax. Buttermilk also has wide open runs, as well as decent wooded areas to ski/snowboard through. By this time I was getting the hang of snowboarding again and was enjoying the runs.
A mini-story is that I received a message on my phone from an attorney reminding me of *my* court date in St. Louis on Tuesday. Ahem, what? So we played phone tag a bit before he left me a message that the court date was for someone else who had given him the phone number as an emergency contact. I used to live in Missouri (and at one time
in St. Louis) and still have a St. Louis phone number, so an easy mix up (I still get wrong number calls every two weeks or so from the STL). At any rate, it came to nothing more than mild entertainment/drama for a bit.
That night we went to Margarita Grill in Snowmass Village for dinner. Decent food and a pretty good margarita. An interesting thing about Snowmass Village is that the streets and sidewalks are heated so the snow can't build up on them... on that particular night it was creating fog on top of the streets... Adam said that he has seen it cause so much fog that it was tough to drive in.
Also, later that night we ended up watching "The Italian Job". Cool quote:
Stella: "I trust everyone. It's the devil inside them I don't trust."
In some, that little devil lives a little more extravagantly, sometimes with a great amount of white wool to hide himself in, you know?
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Well, Tuesday morning it was time to head back to Michigan. But not so fast. The short, short version is this: my 9:15 AM flight out was cancelled,
the 11:45 AM flight arrived in Denver too late to make my new connection, I stood in line over an hour and made three calls to United, eventually routed through Minneapolis (with a three hour layover), and arrived back in Michigan a little after midnight (I was supposed to have arrived around 6 PM) -- and my bag didn't make it.
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Friday I drove back to the airport to get my bag.
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Aspen was awesome. I am very thankful to Adam for opening his home to me and to Luke for inviting me along. It was a well timed and rejuvenating vacation.
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Celeste in Missouri
non-member comment
SO COOL!
That looks awesome! I'm glad you got some sleep, but that stinks about the ribs! What is it with you and cool injuries?? Deep cut foot surfing in Australia, fractured ribs skiing in Aspen... how cool are those? I hurt my shoulder falling up the stairs the other night... not nearly as cool. haha