Thursday, September 15, 2005

Snow skiing

I live in Colorado and one of my hobbies is downhill skiing. It's tough carrying thirty pounds of skis, boots, poles, ski clothing and riding a bicycle 50 miles to an elevation of 10,000 feet. I have taken the RTD Ski-and-Ride bus from Boulder to Eldora ski resort and back, but that's a little limiting and I will have two skiing children and their gear to shuttle with me. Even riding a bike one mile from my home to the bus stop is tricky with all that gear, and the local buses only have racks for two bikes. For me, a bus ride to Eldora involves two bus transfers. That's normally not a problem, but the logistics get interesting with bikes plus ski gear.

I was delighted, then, to find this ski carpool website. SkiCarpool.com is a service to find other skiers who will drive up to the resorts.

The registration interface is clunky and non-intuitive, but once you get past that the search is fairly easy. You specify distance from your zip code for other skiers and the ski areas you're willing to go to. The profile asks what kind of skiing you like to do -- alpine, telemark, boarding, green / blue / black / double-diamond, trees, bumps, backcountry, and bowls -- so SkiCarpool is also handy to find skiing partners.

Incidentally, if you like attention, riding a bike with alpine ski gear strapped on is a great way to get some interesting looks.

1 comment:

  1. You could also try Nirbi.com. You can pinpoint your start and end destinations and get a list of recommendations automatically.

    http://www.nirbi.com.

    ReplyDelete