Park City Skiing - Feb 2011

A friend of ours was doing her residency in Salt Lake City, so we thought it would be a good opportunity to go skiing there.  We decided on a weekend trip to ski in Park City.  We skied at Park City Mountain Resort Friday night and Canyons Resort on Saturday.  We flew into SLC and drove to Park City and stayed at the Marriott for one night.

Lake Tahoe Ski Trip - January 2011

When we go skiing in Tahoe, we usually stay at a friend's family condo.  We flew into Reno one weekend on a Friday and drove to South Lake Tahoe to the condo at Lake Village Resort.  It was snowing and foggy when we landed.  We usually take the quick route through Carson City, but decided to take the scenic route along the lakeside.  We drove from the 395 to 431 to 28 to 50.  It's about the same distance, but the roads are more windy.

Colorado Ski Trip - January 2009

We went to Colorado Jan 1 - Jan 4 for a ski trip to Summit County.  We stayed in Frisco in a rented condo and skied at Copper Mountain on Jan 2 and Breckenridge on Jan 3.

We left early on New Years day for Denver.  At the airport, we were delayed an hour, because the pilots didn't show up.  The airline at first tried to blame it on the fog, but we could hear other planes taking off and coming in, so this news didn't sit well with everyone.  Finally, the staff said there was a mix up in the scheduling and the pilots were told to report at a different time.  When the pilots showed up, they were applauded...only because we all wanted to leave.

The weather in Colorado was quite cold that weekend.  It did snow on Saturday while we skied at Breckenridge.

We had Mike's brother and a friend of his stay with us as well as a friend of mine and 2 of her friends.  We also had some other friends that stayed somewhere else, but had dinner with us at the condo.  On Friday night, we made spaghetti and had a salad and garlic bread.  On Saturday, we started chili in a crockpot before we left to ski and had that for dinner when we came back.

Before coming back home, we went to Boulder to visit and hang out.

LODGING

MountainSide Condos in Frisco (TA Review)

I planned this ski trip for 6 adults and spent a lot of time looking for a place for all of us that was a reasonable price. We were only traveling for a long weekend and a lot of rentals require a week stay. I finally came across a place in Frisco on VRBO.com. The place we ended up with wasn't the place we originally wanted, but the owner has multiple rentals and recommended this one for us: http://www.vrbo.com/116429.

COPPER MOUNTAIN SKI RESORT

We left our condo at about 10am to drive to Copper Mountain.  It was only a 15 minute drive.  We paid to park in a lot close to the resort.  It was cold, but didn't snow.

We spent all our time on the middle green runs: High Point, Easy Rider, and Carefree.  We used the Easy Rider lift mostly and the lines were a little long, but moved quickly.  We packed a lunch and ate it in the dining area.

It was pretty and I enjoyed skiing here, but I still like Breckenridge more.

BRECKENRIDGE SKI RESORT

We woke up on Saturday to snow!  I love skiing in the snow.  We bundled up and headed out about 10am.  It was about 20-25 minutes to drive to Breckenridge (my favorite place to ski).  The snow slowed things down a little.  We saw a car in the ditch on the way.

We parked and took the bus to the gondola.  We rode the gondola up to Peak8 and stayed there all day.  We stayed on the greens for the most part again and tried a blue a couple of times.  We all fell a lot when on the blue, so we continued to stay on the greens.  We are all once a year skiers, so we just wanted to relax and have fun without falling down!

We had friends with us that skied down to peak 7 and met up with us for lunch.  We brought sandwiches, apples, and sodas and stored them in a locker.

When we were done skiing, we took the bus back to the parking lot and our car wouldn't start.  We had to wait for friends to try and help us.  The car finally started after a couple of hours, it had been flooded.  Other than that, we had a wonderful day.

Ski Weekend Lake Tahoe - February 2008

We try to go skiing every year.  It seems we alternate between Tahoe and Colorado.  This year, we chose Lake Tahoe over Presidents' Day weekend.

We stayed at friend's townhome and skied at Kirkwood and Heavenly.  The slopes were pretty busy due to the holiday weekend, but we managed to find some runs that were less crowded at each place.


The weather was a little warm, in the 40s and 50s.  We flew into Reno on a  Fri morning and met up with Mike's brother and a friend.  We drove to South Lake Tahoe after enjoying lunch at In and Out Burger.

We were staying at a friend's townhome and he was driving in from San Francisco.  We had a few hours to kill before we could get into the house.

We decided to go rent our ski gear and wander around Heavenly Village.  We did a little shopping and ended up having a few drinks at Fire and Ice out by the fire pit.

Kirkwood Ski Resort

We started our ski adventure on Saturday by driving to Kirkwood from S. Lake Tahoe.  It was a bit of a drive and we got there by 11-1130am.  We found parking and carried our gear to The Lodge to find lockers for our lunches.  We were able to get a locker and put our food and some clothes inside and left for the lifts.

We started on lift 5.  After getting off the lift, we took the run to the right, Zachary.  Ok, this was the first time down for most of us since last year's season.  It was a horrible start.  We all fell down several times before finally getting to the bottom.  We went back up lift 5, but decided to go to the left, Monte Wolfe.  Much better, we all managed to only fall down once or twice on that one.  We made a couple more runs down Monte Wolfe before deciding to go back to the lockers for lunch.

After lunch, we moved to lift 1.  We skied down to lift 2 and took that up to the top.  These runs were a little less crowded, but seemed to be a little icy in spots.  We repeated the lift 2 runs a few times before heading down and calling it a day.  I ended up having one of my most embarrassing moments skiing during this time.  I was riding on a lift with Mike and when we got to get off, something happened where it was going too fast or something and we had to actually jump off the lift.  I ended not getting off in time and had to ride all the way back down.  It was not fun having everyone look and laugh at me...oh well!  I think the lifts closed at 430.

This resort also had tubing and ice skating.

Heavenly Ski Resort

We arrived at Heavenly, California Lodge, between 10 and 11am.  We bought lift tickets, $81 each, and rented a locker for our lunches and things.

We headed off to the lifts.  The lines were so long for most of the lifts.  We took about 3 Express lifts to get to the top and started to make our way down some slopes.  We took Skyline Trail and saw some amazing views of the lake and the valley on the other side.  We then hit the Big Dipper, which was a little steep in the beginning and found Galaxy run.  Once we got to Galaxy, there weren't a ton of people and the grade was perfect for all of us.  Once we got to the bottom of Galaxy, the lift to go back up had no line!  The lift is pretty long to go back up, but it took us right to the Galaxy run again.  We did that one a few times since we all liked it and it wasn't crowded.

After a few runs, we decided to take a break and agreed to head to East Peak Lodge after riding the Galaxy lift back up.  We decided trying to go all the way back to where we started would take too long.  Somehow one of our friends got separated and ended up at Stagecoach Lodge.  We all ate lunch and decided on a meeting place to get back together.

We took a few lifts and met up with our friend at the Top of the Gondola.  We made a few more runs before deciding to call it a day.  We were all exhausted from skiing all day yesterday as well.

We decided to take the Round-a-bout down.  It was a pretty narrow trail and was really crowded.  We all went down at our own speeds, but had a hard time with all the people stopping in the middle of the trail.  The narrow trail also made it harder to control our speed.

It was a great day of skiing, but exhausting.

Colorado Ski Trip - January 2007

We flew into Denver on a Thursday night for a weekend ski trip.  We drove to the mountains on Friday and met up and stayed with some friends at their townhome in Frisco.  Their place was close to and maybe even belonged to Mountain Side Condos, because we had access to the clubhouse and the huge outside hot tubs.

We skied at Keystone for night time skiing on Friday night.  They only have certain slopes open at night on the front of the mountain.  It was the second time I'd gone to night skiing there.  It's fun when it gets dark, but it also gets a little icy and cold.

On Saturday, we all skied at
Breckenridge.  So far, Breckenridge is my favorite ski resort.  I love the slopes and the views.  We stayed at Peak 9 the whole day and had lots of fun.  I ski and almost everyone else snowboards.