M2- WEEK TWENTY THREE

You are in for a treat this week! T snuck away on his annual skiing MANcation and is here to blog about it:

This past week was our annual guys' ski trip. This year, however, we were down a guy and plus a GIRL! Ryan sacrificed the annual ski trip for school and Susannah came along with us instead. We missed Ryan but still had a ton of fun like we normally do.

We always have great food made by Sandy & Krista. I know all of us were very thankful that we came home to spaghetti, meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and chili on a nightly basis. They bake the food ahead of time and send it with us frozen.

This year we skied Breckenridge two days and Keystone one day. The weather was beautiful everyday- the sky was blue and the sun was shining. The high everyday was about 34 degrees with hardly any wind through out the entire trip. The only downside was they could of had a bit more snow. A couple of runs had dirt piles right in the middle of the run about half way down the mountain. It made the skiing very interesting when we had to stop abruptly and cut across to a different run. Especially when you are 12,000ft up.. you just figure it always has snow.

Now for some pictures:
Night skiing at Keystone was a first for me. Jamie and I stopped to take it all in. 

Our view every morning from the condo.

 
Evan and Jamie sizing up our next descent to the bottom. We're standing at about 12,500ft right now.

Uncle T and Aunt P are so generous to allow us to stay a couple days in their condo. We have stayed there the last two years and love the view and the connivence of how close we are to so many mountains. I do not think we could ask for a better set up!

To finish here are just a few stats of mine from our day at Keystone. I used the the Alpine Replay application on my iPhone that Susannah showed me to document everything I did on the mountain. This app tracks everything from your speed to how many miles you skied and also even how many calories I burned in a day:

I can't wait for next year!

Mancation 2012

So last week the guys and I took off for Colorado for a little fun in the snow. Evan, Ryan, Jamie, Todd and I went to Copper Mountain and snowboarded and skied for three days. We were gone a total of five. Tom and Patty Hoffman were nice enough to let us use their condo that they have in Frisco, CO. The condo was so nice and we had a blast.

The eight hour drive was a lot of fun. You learn a lot about a person when you are cooped up with someone for that long.

We were very fortunate and got 9 inches of snow. The fresh powder that we got to ski and snowboard on was amazing. 

We skied on some pretty crazy parts of the mountain. This part was a black diamond run and we were on a small ridge on the mountain. The wind was really blowing hard and we all wanted to get to a lower part of the mountain. 

This is what can happen when the snow gets to deep. We all had this great idea to take a tree route down to the bottom. Well as you can see it did not turn out very well for me. I was lucky that Jamie stayed with me cause it took us an hour to finish this run. Jamie said that he had never seen someone get stuck as bad as that. Two years ago he said he had never seen someone hit the ground as hard as I did when we were skiing in Steamboat. I guess I am just not the norm.  

But now you can see that I actually do know how to ski a little bit and I am not totally worthless. We had so much fun flying down the mountain. 

 The ski trips that we take every year are going to be something that I remember for the rest of my life. I am so thankful that I am able to partake in this great family outing.