Winter Park, Colorado

I've been at a conference near Granby, Colorado this past several days, hence the lack of posts here on Cyclelicious. I spent a day and a half skiing at Winter Park Ski Resort. Near the end of the day today I wiped out in a mogul field and pulled something in the back of my leg. It was too painful to ski but I did it anyway. By the time I got back to the lift the pain was gone, so my son and I went for a steep black hill for our final run.

I also tried out Sol Vista Basin in Granby while I was in the area. SolVista is the new name of the Silver Creek ski area. In three hours I went down every blue and black run at least twice. SolVista a tiny local ski area with four slow lifts, short runs, 1000 feet of vertical, and $40 lift tickets. SolVista/Silver Creek has never been popular in Colorado, but it's not a bad place if you want to learn to ski and hate crowds.

Most of the adults were wedging down the slopes. If you're a confident blue-level skier, SolVista probably won't do much for you. SolVista is out of the way enough, however, that I was able to find fresh powder along the edges of the runs. At Winter Park today, every square inch of the every mountain was scraped clean -- even the Parsenn Bowl and Vasquez Cirque on the backside of Mary Jane were bare of powder.

Two weeks ago, I was in upstate New York and I tried the Catamount Ski Area along the NY/Mass border. This was my first experience skiing on New England ice. Once I figured out how to control my skis on the ice it wasn't too bad. Catamount isn't especially steep, but the monster bumps on one of the runs kicked my tail. I'm not a bump skier anyway so that's not saying much.

Although it was cloudy and foggy in New York, the temperature was pleasant at around the freezing point -- my business casual attire with longjohns plus hat and gloves kept me warm enough, though I did stand out from all of the teens wearing heavy snowpants, parkas, and goggles. I think 20+ years of riding my bike in the winter has acclimated me to cold weather.

That is not a photo of me at Winter Park -- it's just a random Flickr photo of somebody at Winter Park.
Photo info: WinterPark 068 by dawgfanjeff.