Free Organic Fair Trade Coffee

I can't believe it. For two weeks in a row we've ended up with fresh spring snow.

We had originally planned our Aspen trip in the middle of February, but we had to reschedule due to Christine's Paris trip. We had no idea if the conditions would be good, but it was really the only weekend we could do it. On our trip up from Denver it was snowing until Vail Pass and we knew the we totally lucked out.

With the 3" of new snow that fell over night, we decided to go to Aspen Highlands on Saturday because I wanted to hike the Highland Bowl. For late season skiing, I guess we arrived a little early (8:30) and we got some great close parking. We were in a covered garage, and just footsteps from the escalator up to the base area. It kind of makes the $10 parking a more bearable.

We went up to the escalator and Christine quickly found what could be her favorite ski resort perk ever: Free organic fair trade coffee. Since we hadn't had breakfast yet, it was key in keeping things civil while she looked for boots at the rental shop. According to her, it was good coffee.

Christine was still boot-less after a horrible experience with Jacques in Winter Park (maybe eventually one of us will get around to blogging that), so we stepped into the rental shop at the base (Four Seasons). They were extremely helpful and one of the guys brought all sorts of boots out for her to try. Eventually she found one that was close, and the boot fitter then proceeded to pull the liner out and try all sorts of adjustments to make the boots more comfortable. All that for rental boots. When all was said and done, Christine had some boots that were fitting her fairly well. When it came time to pay, it was only going to cost about $30 more to buy the boots instead of renting them for a couple days. Sweet deal. Even if she ends up needing different boots, she can sell these and pretty easily I think.

While Christine was getting fitted, I went for a quick run. I couldn't believe how great the snow was at the top. There were a few inches of ultra fluffy new snow on top of some groomed stuff on a wide open run. I was having a great time ripping down the mountain and there was barely anyone else there to steal my fresh snow. At one point, I half expected someone to ski up to me and tell me that I had somehow skied into a closed area or something. That's how unusually great it was. I mean it 9:30 on a Saturday in Aspen. Crazy.

Christine and I took a couple more runs on the wide open slopes before we went up to hike Highland Bowl. The top of the highest lift is at an altitude of about 11,675 feet, and the altitude where we were hiking was about 12,392 feet. If was a long hike and very windy and it was actually crowded. As I looked up the mountain at the line of people hiking, it felt like watching people in Everest stuck in a traffic jam. It's just one of those situations where you don't expect to see that many people.

We eventually made it to the end of the hike and the snow was great up there. In addition to the new overnight snow, a bunch was being added by the strong winds. That also made the visibility poor at top, but it's a small price to pay for nice snow at the end of March. It was probably the best snow I've skied on this year too. We went all the way around the bowl until we got into the trees, and from what we gathered from other skiers the snow was better there than in the open part of the bowl. (For reference, the picture at the top of this post is the bowl we hiked. We started at the right near the trees and hike towards the left to the highest point. Then we skied to the left and down the bowl through the sparse trees.)

Sunday Aaron joined Christine and I for some runs at Aspen Mountain. There was no new snow, but we had a great time on the groomed runs in the morning. Christine was loving the steep groomed runs. Later in the day we did laps on the same set of runs for a while. It had a good variety of terrain, including some bumps which is something I wanted to get better at skiing. Aaron called it a day before us, so we did one last run on a bump run. I'm still not good at moguls, but I'm getting better.

When we were finished, we met Aaron at the bar at the top of the mountain where he had already lined up some Patron tequila shots for us. We sat by the window looking out at the amazing mountains while we drank our shots and some beer. What a great way to end the ski season. We still had to make it down the mountain though. It was an interesting time, but we all made it safe and sound (and very tired).