Unexcused Absences

Second half of February, 2018 — Italian Dolomites. After checking out of Val Gardena, we drove our rental car to Arabba and skied the Marmolada section of the resort, to the south of the town. Marmolada has several things to offer, including the largest vertical drop of any single ski run in the Dolomites (almost 6,000 vertical feet in 5.3 miles), plus an on-mountain museum devoted to the WW I fighting between Austria and Italy. It was conveniently on the route from Val Gardena to Cortina d’Ampezzo, the final stop of our European ski vacation.

Cortina d’Ampezzo as seen from our room

When we were planning this trip, I imagined skiing in northern Italy in late February under sunny skies, warm weather, and long lunches on sun decks of the countless on-mountain restaurants. Mother Nature, though, didn’t process that request, and we had some of the coldest ski conditions we’ve experienced. It was still exciting to ski at world-famous Cortina, we just missed out on the sun decks.

Cold weather rime ice

Cold afternoon in Cortina

Top station at Col Drusciè

A clear but very cold dawn

We were told several things by friends who had skied here previously; first, that people were more likely to walk around town showing off their fur coats than to actually saddle up for skiing (true), and second, that the town was expensive (also true). But Heather found us a nice top-floor apartment at a reasonable price, and the lift tickets were the same “Dolomiti Super-Ski Pass” that we used in Val Gardena, so the total cost for lift tickets were under 30 euros per day. That, plus our place had a kitchen, and there were a couple very nice supermarkets walking distance from our apartment.

The main church in Cortina

Cortina is actually three (or four, or six, depending on how you count) separate ski areas, and you can sort of move between them by bus. I say “sort of”, because while we did see buses out circulating around, it wasn’t clear at all from the published schedule when, or even where, to catch a particular bus. Sort of like Val Gardena, where every bus, whether local or regional, and whether eastbound or westbound, displayed the number “352”.

Fortunately, with our rental car we could go when and where we pleased. We spent most of our days in the Tofana area, which is home to the annual Women’s World Cup races. We visited the Lagazuoi section twice (or maybe it was three times), and the Faloria section twice.

At the Lagazuoi summit

Lagazuoi is home to possibly the single most beautiful ski run in the world. First you drive about 25 minutes west of town, then take a long, steep cable car to the 2800 meter high summit. After a few hundred meters, the slope splits to the right (back to the cable car) or to the left, which then winds down a long hidden valley, passes a couple restaurants (it is Italy, after all), and comes out at the “horse lift”. There is actually a place where, for a couple euros, you and 38 of your closest friends grab onto a long rope and get pulled, by a horse and sled, maybe half a mile along the valley floor, out to where you either take a chairlift to Alta Badia, or a bus back to the Lagazuoi cable car.

The cable car to Lagazuoi

The “horse lift” at the bottom

Part-way down the Lagazuoi piste

This area was also on the front lines in WW I, like Arabba and Marmolada that we skied previously, and the soldiers carved intricate galleries in the mountains that can be seen from the cable car. It is tragically ironic that the direct descendants of the soldiers who fought and died in brutal winter conditions 100 years ago are now likely sharing chairlift rides over the very same terrain. Lagazuoi also has, like most good European ski resorts, a proscribed circuit (in this case, the “Super 8), where you ski clockwise from the cable car summit down to the road, then across the road and clockwise through the “five towers” (also a battlefield) area.

World War I hardware

A chairlift on the Super 8 circuit

The Cinque Torri (five towers)

Unfortunately I was out of action for a couple days with a sinus infection, but Heather wasted no time in picking up three Italian boyfriends on the chairlift. They are all retired, and their daily routine is to catch first chair at Tofana, lap the steep runs near the summit until 10:30 sharp (“I hate skiing once the children come out”), then stop for their special hot chocolate at Bar Ristorante Col Taron. I say “special” because it is possibly the thickest, richest hot chocolate on the planet. It’s more like hot fudge in a mug. You can stand the spoon straight up and it won’t fall over.

Heather’s Italian “boyfriends”

The “special” chocolate at Col Taron

The upper track for the Women’s World Cup

Our next-to-last day had some rare mild weather, so we skied the Lagazuoi and Cinque Torre areas under sunny skies, then stopped for a long lunch on the deck at the Scotoni Hutte on the hidden valley trail. We had a perfect seat in the sun, and enjoyed a deer-meat ragu main course with Kaiserschmarrn (literally, “the emperor’s mess”) for desert, plus as a bonus they served Andechs beer (!) on draft.

Scotoni Hutte in the hidden valley

Kaiserschmarrn for dessert

Andechs on tap!

The hidden valley behind Lagazuoi

This wraps up our 6-week European ski vacation. Everything has been wonderful; getting pummeled by the German language in Austria, taking a ski lift that is pulled by horses, skiing all the circuits (the Weisse Ring in Lech, the Sella Ronda in Val Gardena, the Super 8 in Cortina), sampling the on-mountain restaurants in Italy, learning to queue (or I guess “un-queue”) in lift lines like the Italians. From here it’s a quick visit to Venice, followed by our flight home and a rapid turnaround before beginning our 2018 Bahamas cruise onboard our trawler, Miss Adventure.

Below the Tofana summit

Dusk as seen from our balcony

The afternoon scene at Scotoni Hutte

First half of February, 2018 — Italian Dolomites. A train ride south from Innsbruck, plus a bus ride east from Ponte Gardena, brought us to the Gardena Valley. Val Gardena is not actually a town, but three towns (Ortisei, St. Cristina, and Selva) at the north-western corner of the Sella Ronda, a 4-mile-diameter rugged plateau in the Italian Dolomites. Four interconnected ski areas circle the plateau (Alta Badia, Arabba, and Val di Fassa in addition to Val Gardena), and a ~21 mile long by 18,000 vertical foot circuit can be traversed on skis either clockwise or counter-clockwise around the region.

St. Cristina in Val Gardena

Our apartment was a small space in a chalet, nicely located in the center of town a 200m walk from a chairlift and a 50m walk from a major bus stop. The chairlift led to an under-used section of the resort, with very few routes in or out, so we had unmolested intermediate and difficult runs mostly to ourselves every morning, as a warm-up before we began our touring and eating adventures for the day.

A morning powder run on our secret slope

The rocks above St Cristina

Our village of St. Cristina

And speaking of eating… the Italian ski resorts have the correct focus, in this writer’s humble opinion. In the section of slopes to the north of St Cristina, a space equivalent in size to Vail’s Teacup and China Bowls, there were 12 (!) on-mountain restaurants. The equivalent section at Vail has… one, the Two-Elk Lodge. Just so you know I’m not exaggerating, the restaurants are Baita Pramulin Hutte, Baita Odles, Malga Neidia Hutte, Baita Cuca, Fermeda Hutte, Baita Daniel Hutte, Mastle Hutte, Rifugio Troier, Baita Sofie, Baita Gamsblut, Ristorante Seceda, and Baita Curona Hutte. This is one tiny corner of the skiable terrain, with only four of the 223 lifts covering the whole Sella Ronda. The Sella Ronda, as a whole, contains 138 slope-side restaurants. Ok, enough with the superlatives. Bottom line, Italians have clearly made eating the true focus of their skiing.

An on-mountain restaurant

Another on-mountain restaurant

Yet another on-mountain restaurant

After a few days of skiing within the western and northern sections of the connected resorts, the weather cooperated and allowed us to do the complete clockwise circuit. We took a bus up-valley to Selva, then rode a long gondola eastward to the pass at Dantercepies. From there we skied a long east-facing slope that took us all the way down into Alta Badia. It was a rather magnificent run in the bright sunshine, beneath the massive cliffs of the Brunecker Turm mountain peak to our south.

The rocks of the Sella Ronda

At Alta Badia we turned south, crossed the Tyrol/Veneto border, and continued with multiple lifts and runs into Arabba. This area was on the front lines of World War I, and Austrian and Italian troops dug extensive galleries into the sides of the mountains, from which they proceeded to shoot at each other for several years.

Somewhere on the Sella Ronda

The slopes go right up to the rocks

The pass at Dantercepies in the early morning (looking west)

We took a few side runs in Arabba off the official circuit route, since the terrain was too tasty to pass up. Once over Pass Pordoi, we skied down into the Val di Fassa ski area and took a few more laps off the circuit. We still made it back to Val Gardena, and the Malga Sella restaurant, around 1 pm for a late lunch. After working our way through the Gralba and Saslong sections of Val Gardena, we finished our circuit a few hundred meter walk from our apartment.

A slope-side chapel above St. Cristina

The rest of the week was spent trying to identify the best on-mountain eateries using Google and TripAdvisor, then checking them out in person. Our favorites over the two weeks of research were Fermeda Hutte, Sonnenhutte, and Malga Sella in Val Gardena, Rifugio Fodom in Arabba, Skihutte Las Vegas (?) in Alta Badia, and Col Pradat Hutte in Colfosco (with possibly the best mountain view of any restaurant anywhere).

Slopeside pizza at Fermeda Hutte

Skiing under the Grohmannspitze

A table with a view; lasagne at Col Pradat Hutte

Our second-to-last day we met up with a friend of a friend, Jean-Charles (from France), and his children, who were staying in Alta Badia at the aforementioned Skihutte Las Vegas. When I told the proprietor that we were meeting Jean-Charles for lunch, he clasped his hands as only Italians can, and exclaimed, “Ahhh, Juan-Carlos, our favorite customer! Let me find him for you.” It was really nice to meet him and his family, and finally put a face to the name of our mutual friend’s exchange student “brother” from many years ago. It was also more than a little embarrassing that, while we were looking forward to speaking French with them, he and his children spoke better English than we did.

With Jean-Charles. I didn’t get the memo about the obligatory green jackets

The best of Tyrol; slopeside pretzels

Welcome to Europe; a slope-side chateau

One final local business to mention; near the end of our stay, we walked a hundred yards up the road for a fantastic dinner at La Tambra pizzeria and steakhouse. It’s a bit confusing because upstairs is the pizza restaurant and downstairs is the steakhouse, although they apparently serve both menus in both places so you’re really just choosing ambiance when the hostess asks whether you want to sit upstairs or downstairs. Our meal was fantastic. We ordered some kind of meat-on-a-skewer sampler and could have easily stretched the portions to cover a steak breakfast the next morning as well as a steak lunch the following noon.

View of the Sella Ronda from way up high

The scenery in the Dolomites is like nothing we’ve ever seen. Even though it’s technically part of the Alps, the landscape is jaw-dropping. Several of the most beautiful ski runs we’ve ever taken are here in the Dolomites. The rock cliffs often seem to jut right up out of the slopes. If you come, bring your camera (and your appetite).

View from our room in the morning

View from our room in the evening

More mountain scenery

A few additional observations about northern Italy:

• In Tyrolian Italy (the Dolomites), a “guten tag” goes much farther than a “buon giorno”. English is the fourth language; tied for first and second are German and Ladin (the true local dialect that’s actually not far from old Latin), followed by Italian, followed by English.
• Tyrol definitely considers itself its own state (if not, unfortunately, a U.N. recognized country). They have their own foods, customs, and twist on the language (kind of like Texas).
• The lift lines are completely chaotic (I know, hard to believe in Italy), but right before you load the chair, everything seems to sort itself out and 98% of the time you ride with the person (or people) you want to, and very few chairs are under-filled when the lines are long. This inability of the rest of the continent to queue properly is the real reason the British are choosing to leave the EU.
• The bus schedules in Val Gardena were designed by a sadist. Every single bus, whether a local ski bus or a regional town-to-town bus, and whether east-bound or west-bound, displayed the number “352.” I am not making this up. I guess it simplifies life for the locals, who can just tell any inquiring visitor, “Take bus 352” without having to think at all about where they are actually going.

One more quick story about the buses. When we checked in to our apartment, we were given a bus pass that “covers all buses in the Valley, including the ski buses and the regional buses.” “Free of charge?” I asked. “Yes, all free.” So on our first day, we skied out to the far reaches of Seiser Alm, south of Ortisei. Once there, we realized it would take about 5 lifts and a couple hours to work our way back to town. “No problem,” I announced, “the map shows a bus that connects back to St Cristina.” And sure enough, there was a bus pulling up to the stop. So we hopped onboard, and the driver asked for 10 euros. I showed him my bus pass, but he said this bus was 10 euros. Heather speaks some Italian, so she said we were told the buses were free with the pass. “Oh yes, they’re all free… except this one.” Anyway, we were happy to pay since we had already skied 18 runs, 19.5k vertical feet, and 22 miles (according to the “Slopes” app on our phones).

After two weeks in Val Gardena, I took a bus back to Bolzano and rented a car for the final two weeks of our stay in Italy. We wanted to have the flexibility to ski at a different area on the way to Cortina (our final ski stop for this trip), and to have an alternative in case the pass to Cortina was closed by snow and we had to take the long way around (~4hrs). Fortunately, the weather cooperated, and I’ll cover our stay in Cortina in my next post.

Free-form ice sculpture in Ortisei

Early morning in Alta Badia

Another look at the ice sculptures

St. Cristina

Another on-mountain pizza

The slope-side chateau

Val Gardena is famous for wood carving; a larger-than-life nativity scene

Second half of January, 2018 – Austrian Alps. In the quest to eventually bring our website back up to the present, it’s time to switch gears from our French canal-boat adventures and travel back to Europe for some skiing. Practically everyone we spoke to, when we said we wanted to ski in Austria, said we had to go to Lech. So off we went for two weeks as the opening act in a 6-week European ski vacation.

The twin areas of Lech-Zürs, pronounced by the locals as “Leshch-Zoeurs” as only a native German speaker can (side note; the Germans seem to add extra letters when pronouncing their words, whereas the French proudly ignore up to a third of the letters in their words), are sort of the Vail/Beaver Creek of Austria. The prices and level of luxury are comparable, and the “fake European walking village” of Vail appears to have been lifted almost directly from the real European walking village of Lech.

Lech; a real European walking village

The day we arrived — flight to Zurich, train to St. Anton, bus to Lech, taxi to our chalet — the Alps were in the final days of a serious, multi-day snowstorm. It was questionable whether we’d even make it to our room; the road to Lech goes right through some serious avalanche terrain, and it’s not uncommon for the village to be completely cut off by the threat of slides. As it happened, our bus made it through, but the following day both roads into Lech were completely closed for about a day.

Forecast for 1.5m of snow

Road closures on either side of Lech

A serious snowpack

After the storm

The good news about a snowstorm is of course the fresh snow. The bad news about a snowstorm in the Alps is that, because the slopes are mostly above tree-line, the falling snow and clouds create white-out conditions, where you can’t tell up from down. So our first day we were limited to the lower slopes near the village, where there were a few trees and some houses to use as points of reference.

Snowpack on a roof

Cablecar to Oberlech in the snow

The upper mountain in Lech

But the bonus is that once the storm cleared (after dropping around 1.5 meters of snow over 5 days), the entire, massive connected area of Lech-Zürs/St. Christoph/St. Anton/Warth/Schröcken offered up magnificent skiing conditions. As an added bonus, most of the main chairlifts and gondolas in Lech-Zürs have heated seats. I am not making this up.

Apres-ski in Oberlech

St. Christoph

Looking towards Trittkopf in Zürs

Europeans in general seem to enjoy skiing on specific routes or circuits, and we encountered multiple ones at the three ski regions we visited. The main one at Lech-Zürs is the Weisse Ring (a 22-km circle route that goes clockwise from the town square in Lech, into Zürs, down a long trail to Zug, and up what had to be the world’s longest double chairlift back to Lech. There is also a “Run of Fame” that runs end-to-end from Warth to St. Anton, with a 60,000 foot vertical drop over 65km of slopes. And once you get to the other end, you have no hope of getting back before the lifts close — it would take pretty much an entire day of hard skiing to complete the one-way effort. We did not try this one.

Skiing the “White Ring”

Lech at dusk

A secret ski run in Zürs

Some additional thoughts on Austria:

• Every country in Europe travels to Austria to ski; we’ve heard the usual languages (Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Norwegian — or maybe it was Swedish, it’s hard to tell) plus some unusual ones, for us at least (Russian, Polish, Bulgarian, Arabic).
• The level of skiing in Austria caught us off guard. Most Austrians are really, really good skiers; even grandma carries an avalanche kit for skiing off-piste. I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised, the entire western half of the country is in the Alps. Plus, they invented modern skiing.
• The locals are very friendly and welcoming – the German language even has a single word (naturally) for “the state or feeling of warmth, friendliness, and good cheer” that’s prevalent in the Austrian Alps. Repeat after me: Gemütlichkeit.
• As a very good friend told us before we flew over, in Austria, actions are either forbidden, or they’re obligatory.
• Bacon, or at least their version of it (thinly sliced, often cured instead of cooked, and called “Speck” in German), is a major staple of the Austrian diet; there are actually stores called “Speckeria”, which basically translates as “bacon emporium”. Imagine an entire store devoted completely to bacon; this is the world in which I wish to live.
• We tried the local varieties, but the best wines in Austria come from Bordeaux (France).
• Speaking of France, there IS compelling evidence that Austria invented the croissant.
• I know it’s shocking to point out, but Austrians love efficiency. Restaurant visits are based on your desired timing, not the waiters’.
• The drinking age for beer and wine is 16; for liquor, 18. Austrians have a much more civilized outlook on the subject than Americans.
• The mountain cheeses of Austria are delicious and varied, although we have not seen anything approaching that most magnificent of all cheeses, Epoisses.
• I need to emphasize again that Austrians have entire stores devoted to bacon.

A bacon store

That’s a cheese-stuffed hot-dog, wrapped in bacon

Austria claims to have invented the croissant

We stayed in a tiny little room in a 6-room inn about a 10-minute walk from the center of town, Chalet Verwall (pronounced something close to “Fair-vahl”). How tiny was it? The kitchen was in the bedroom. However, it was pretty far up the luxury scale compared to our normal accommodations, but Lech is that kind of place. C’est la vie (or I guess in this case, “Es ist Leben”). The manager and his wife (Mark and Melanie) were a real treat, and since the rest of the chalet was mostly empty during our two-week visit, we became friends. Mark is quite the chef, and several mornings he baked us fresh bread for breakfast. They even invited us for a home-cooked meal our final night.

Our room, with Mark’s fresh bread and squeezed orange juice

A final highlight from our trip is that a friend from Beaver Creek introduced us to the managing director of the tram and cable-car company in Lech. His job title in German is something like “Oberlech Bergbahn Meister”, which is possibly the world’s coolest job title. He invited us to join him and a group of semi-VIP visitors from Colorado (of all places), so we spent a full day getting a proper local’s tour of the entire St Anton-am-Arlberg interconnected ski areas.

On the VIP tour with Christoph (in the red and black, center)

After Austria it was back on the train to head to our next stop, Val Gardena in the Italian Dolomites (with a one-night stop in Innsbruck to load up on bacon before leaving the country). Hopefully there are no border guards, because I wouldn’t be surprised if taking bacon out of Austria is forbidden. Or perhaps, if I’m lucky, it’s obligatory.

The storm clears

Above the morning fog

Old-town Innsbruck

Above St. Anton looking east

Celebrating Trump’s first year in office

Beware of avalanches, indeed

Early evening in Lech

One of many slope-side restaurants

Dusk falls over Lech

Heather sledding in Oberlech

A slopeside restaurant in St Anton

Sunset in Lech

A full moon rises over the Alps

Innsbruck

We didn’t ski a single turn last winter because we spent January through May in the Bahamas. This year we were due for some skiing, but that would mean giving up a couple months on the Miss Adventure. It’s to my continued annoyance that I can’t be in two places at one time, so we had to choose. Hence, Vail.

China Bowl, Vail

Vail is possibly the most famous ski area in America, maybe second to Aspen. The area is adjacent to, and four times as big as, Beaver Creek, where we spent five winters in a row up until our 2015/2016 winter in the Bahamas. This year Heather found (and rented for us) the second-smallest condo in Vail, located across from Solaris Plaza and a six minute walk from Gondola One.

Our condo; second floor, far right, foreground

We flew out the day after the MLK long weekend, with the plan to stay until the first weekend of spring break. Since we didn’t want to be inconvenienced by actually working at the resort, with only 43 potential days of skiing in our schedule, we chose not to re-apply for our on-hill jobs that we had at the Beav (Vail and Beaver Creek are all one big happy company, so getting work at Vail would have been easy).

Vail Village

The weather in Colorado did not look promising at the beginning of the season. Vail had to delay its opening, and was plagued by warm temperatures and no snow all through November. Fortunately, in December, Al Gore relented and allowed some cold and snow to hit the Rockies. The Colorado resorts received almost an entire winter’s worth of snow in the seven weeks starting early December. And, because timing is everything, we arrived for that last week of heavy snow, during the best conditions of the season.

Lots of snow in the West Vail Mall parking lot

We tried to ease our ski muscles into shape, we really did, but the skiing was so terrific that we worked ourselves to exhaustion the first five days. Our fifth day was easily our second best powder skiing day ever, topped only by an incredible session in the French Alps in 2013. The powder in the back bowls was deep and plentiful. For some reason the resort was not crowded at all – possibly because the locals had already enjoyed 6+ weeks of continuous powder skiing. It was close to noon when we took the series of photos below in Siberia Bowl and Inner Mongolia Bowl.

Heather gets some quality powder time

Bolshoi Ballroom in Siberia Bowl

That’s me sampling a pristine powder field, Inner Mongolia Bowl

After the storm track returned to normal (one snowfall every 7-10 days), we got down to some serious socializing, and met up with our friends Greg and Susan, Audre and Dimitri, Elizabeth and Michael, Ellen and Emil, Harry and Debbie, Jeff and Christine, plus Praz, Megan, Jen, Guy, Sean, Kevin, “Tahoe” Joe, “Other” Kent, and Mike. We had several visits to the spa at the Four Seasons, courtesy of our friends who own a condo there, and we took evening walks through Vail Village and visited our favorite restaurants (the Minturn Saloon, Crazy Mountain Brewery, Tiamo, Moe’s BBQ, Vendetta’s, Blue Moose Pizza). Plus there were parties and gatherings and we basically didn’t have a free minute for a month and a half.

Heather enjoys an afternoon skate

The Vail Chapel covers all the bases

A clearing winter storm

We did wander over to Beaver Creek once or twice a week for either social skiing or the Monday Town Series races. As in previous years, we were very un-American and had no car, but the public transportation in Eagle County is fantastic and the lack of car never really bothered us. The Race Series was very good to us, and we won some great stuff, including race gloves (that I traded with a friend who had won a backpack), a boot bag, thermal base-layers, two restaurant gift certificates, a hard-sided ski carrier, and a GoPro (actually we each won a GoPro but we sold one at a nice discount to a friend).

Heather stirs some powder on Grouse Mountain, Beaver Creek

Early morning at the Beav

Kent cruises Raven’s Ridge, Beaver Creek, in a foot of powder

Our goal at the start of our visit was to ski every single day, at least 10 runs and/or 15,000 vertical feet (as measured by Vail’s Epic Mix iPhone app). Part-way into the season we upped our goal to 12 runs and/or 18k vert per day (it’s good to have goals). Along the way I decided to see how long it would take to ride every single lift in Vail once and (only once), all 24 of them. One day when Heather was at a PSIA clinic I caught first chair in Lions Head and then worked my way around the resort. It turns out it takes 30,218 vertical feet and four hours 45 minutes to complete the circuit.

Either “Daft Punk” or a very cold day at Vail

The weather gods continued to smile, because our last day we woke to 8 inches of fresh powder. This was on top of another 10 inches over the previous couple days, so the slopes skied a lot deeper than 8 inches. By quittin’ time I had amassed 829,622 vertical feet and 548 lift rides over 43 straight days. Heather had two days when she wasn’t feeling well and didn’t ski, so she ended up with about 45k feet fewer. But because we’re chronic over-achievers, at least when it comes to vacationing, we averaged over 19k feet and 12.7 lift rides per day. I feel that what we lack in personal ambition, we more than make up for with vacation acumen.

Final turns of the 2017 ski season

We finished our winter out west with a camping trip to Moab, Utah, with our friends Greg and Susan, plus Jen and her dog Miller. Greg and Susan are serious over-achievers when it comes to outdoor stuff. They have an entire cargo van filled with mountain bikes, tents, sleeping bags, cooking gear, coolers, and food. We camped on the mesa above the town for two nights. The first night was perfect, if a little cold; calm wind, clear skies, and temperatures around freezing. The second night was a lot warmer, but also a lot windier, and wasn’t quite as pleasant; a fine film of Utah dust had covered everything by morning. But, we had spent the previous evening at the fantastic Moab Brewery, so no one was too put out.

Taking Susan’s Jeep seriously off-road

Our campsite on Slickrock

A canyon vista near Moab

Back at Susan and Greg’s house near Beaver Creek, we had one final day to do laundry, pack, and visit the Gore Range Brewery (there’s a pattern developing here, I just can’t put my finger on it). Then it was an easy flight home, and with a six-day turn-around we will hopefully be on our way to the Bahamas to take our trawler, Miss Adventure, on her spring cruise through the Exumas and other Bahamian Out Islands.

Champagne powder, Inner Mongolia Bowl

More powder; Heather in Siberia Bowl

Still more powder in Blue Sky Basin

Jen (& Miller) at Crazy Mountain Brewery

“No matter what the cows say”

A hike near Moab

Heather negotiates with Miller regarding appropriate puddle-time

Snow in Vail Village

“Reverse ski tracks” from a windstorm

One more powder pic; me in the “white room”

It’s hard to believe, but we recently completed our fifth straight ski season living and working at Beaver Creek, home to the industry’s most expensive lift ticket ($159). This year was completely the same, yet totally different.

Beaver Creek has hosted the World Ski Championships three times

The “sameness” includes working in the same departments (ski school and race operations) and doing the Monday Race Series and seeing all our usual friends (Greg & Susan, Guy, Praz, Megan, Elizabeth & Mike, Audri & Dimitri, Sean and Kevin) and shopping at City Market and visiting Crazy Mountain Brewery and living in Avon without a car. The difference was of course that Beaver Creek hosted the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships, as reported earlier. And I checked off my personal goals for the season of skiing 50 days straight without interruption (actually got 51) and 750,000 vertical feet (actually got 822,382).

This season’s numbers on the left, lifetime numbers on the right

But beyond the numbers, some really cool stuff happened this season. We met new friends (Jay, from the Korea 2018 Olympic Organizing Committee, and Jen and Geoff, a lawyer and artist trying out the ski bum life, and Steve and Sherri, refugees from Silicon Valley – Apple, Aldus/Adobe and Norton Utilities – who live in a gorgeous home in Vail). We had a chance to ski Beaver Creek’s “White Glove First Tracks” not once, but twice (courtesy of Heather’s ski school clients one day and our friend Megan who works for Guest Services another day). This is a program where wealthy people pay even more money ($125 on top of the $159 lift ticket) to load the lift an extra half hour early, ski for an hour in Larkspur Bowl, then retire to Beano’s Cabin for a light breakfast and hot chocolate. Both our days just happened to be powder days, as if first tracks on groomers isn’t good enough.

First tracks in Larkspur Bowl

We also pulled in a substantial haul of logo gear from the Championships. As mentioned in the previous post, I traded my 2015 jacket for an awesome Colmar French Ski Team jacket, but we also collected hats, goggles, shirts, sweaters, gate panels, sweatshirts, mugs, water bottles, posters, a complete ski outfit, and the big stadium banner (which we’ve already hung on the wall at the weekend house).

Partial inventory of our haul of free stuff from the World Ski Championships

The best gift of all was from Mother Nature. She mostly held off with the snowfall during the Championships, then opened the heavens for 13 out of 17 days immediately following. Working a race is doubly bad when it snows, because we have to a) spend the day shoveling snow off the course, and b) do so while mad that we can’t be out skiing the fresh snow. So other than one day (Feb 5), when we shoveled for several hours in a valiant but ultimately doomed effort to prepare the track for the ladies’ Super G race, we had a blissfully snow-free race fortnight. And she really smiled on us at the end of our season, because we woke up on our final day to a full foot of fresh snow. To put that in perspective, the total snowfall through the end of the season, after our departure early March, was only about one and a half feet. Someone was really looking out for us.

Screenshot of the Beav’s snowfall history, courtesy of OpenSnow.com

And speaking of fresh snow, on our second-to-last day (March 3), after our White Glove First Tracks and our Beano’s Cabin mini-breakfast, three of us headed over to the Stone Creek Chutes to see what was cooking there. We found some nice deep snow, quite a bit more than the reported 7 inches, so we lapped the Chutes a few times before lunch. Such an amazing almost-end to the season. Our final day, March 4, we actually skied in Vail with our friend Praz as our personal tour guide. We gave the back bowls a good workout and he knew enough secret spots that we were still skiing deep powder after lunch.

Taking my French Ski Team jacket for a cruise in the Stone Creek Chutes

So that wraps up our fifth season at The Beav. We are so glad we did this while (somewhat) young. We both agree that it’s something we should have done in our 20’s, but maybe it’s even better doing it in our 40’s – we don’t have to live in poverty, packed four to a room with a bunch of pot-smoking dropouts, and I suspect we appreciate it more at this mid-life stage. We are more than a touch misty-eyed about this season in particular, because we will be taking a year off from skiing and hope to spend the winter of 2016 in the… well, stay tuned, I’ll share all the details soon.

Snow showers and sunshine at the Spruce Saddle Lodge

My Race Department “office”, the EpicMix racecourse

The snowstake (showing 12 inches) at 5am on our final day

With Megan at Beano’s Cabin

They serve everyone at Crazy Mtn Brewery

The Stone Creek Chutes

Possibly our last skiing at Beaver Creek for over a year