Before heading all the way to Santa Barbara, Erin and I stopped in Snowmass CO for a week long ski vacation with my mom and Matt. The drive was long, and the weather was awful -especially in Kansas. We also hit a snowstorm over Vail pass (10,666 feet high!), but fortunately it was only a small storm and we easily made it over.
Snowmass is a ski village created to service the mountain with the same name. It lies between Aspen and Basalt on the valley floor (along route 82) and boasts a pretty friggin big skiiable area and access to multiple mountain peaks. The runs are wide and not too crowded, at least from mid mountain upward. Runs are rated from Green to double black, and I’ll let you guess which is the hardest.
Erin mostly stuck with greens for the first part of the trip, but quickly became a blue level skiier within a few days. Matt and I tend to prefer tree and glade runs. Thanks to the fresh snow that kept falling, the glades were spectacular this trip! My mom pretty much skiis anything blue or green. I’m hoping to upload a video of a Glade run as an example. While we were there we had 3 days of fresh snow falling mid week. At the top of the mountain this equated to about a foot of fresh powder over a three day period. It was more or less heaven. All in all, Erin and my mom got five days of skiing in and Matt and I got six!
Having received a new action cam for Christmas (thanks Christine!) I was eager to put it to use. It took a few trial runs to dial in the correct settings and the best angles, but I finally got it right by the third day. I’m planning on uploading some of the footage once I have better access to the internet, so stay tuned! As of right now, we have pretty spotty internet in the guest house- but we hope to be able to upload videos/photos soon.
After what felt like too short of a week skiing we had to pack our dirty cars up to finish the road trip to Santa Barbara. This stretch of the trip was approximately one million times nicer to drive. Erin and I would highly recommend driving highway 70 through Utah, thanks to the splendid scenery. Did you know that many of the outlaws fleeing the lawmen in CA in the 1800s took refuge in the Utah mountains? Niether did I. You can thank a plaque on the side of the highway for that info.
As a sneak peak for what is to come: I recently purchased a mountain bike, with plans to purchase a chest strap for the action cam. Once our internet situation gets sorted I plan on taking some videos of mountain biking in Elings park and the foothills behind where I live Santa Barbara to share.
We are trying to get back to our regular Thursday posts now that we are settled in. Once again, thanks for reading!
I enjoy reading about your adventures.