I guess I picked a pretty perfect time to come to Colorado! The winter hasn't been the best, but the day I showed up to ski Aspen was a fresh powder day with 18" of snow in the past 48 hours!
The view out the front door of Jackie's place in Carbondale:
Fresh snow at this elevation means LOTS in the mountains!
Meeting (and getting to stay with) Jackie turned out to be a total jackpot. She's a blast, full of good stories, so sweet, super generous...AND has the same size feet as me! She let me use her skis and boots for the day. And on TOP of that, stayed up late last night posting on Facebook to find me half off tickets for skiing at Aspen! That is so above and beyond the standard Couchsurfing experience.
My "new" boots for the day
Here is Jackie's cute little studio. It's just a bed, a tiny closet, a tiny kitchen, and a nice little bathroom, but it is so perfect for one person!
With free gear for the day, fresh snow, and a half off lift ticket pass waiting for me in Aspen, I was up and moving out the door in no time Wednesday morning.
The roads had just been cleared and it was smooth sailing to the mountain.
I got my lift ticket, grabbed my skis, and jumped on the gondola for the top of the mountain.
So, another reason I had to come out to Colorado for some winter skiing was because I had all these new ski outfits that I had just bought (lost my old ones in the fire), and it was just killing me to not get to wear them this winter! Here is my new purple and gray North Face outfit I wore for the day:
As great as the warm beaches of the Caribbean were, I really love the snow covered mountains just as much. (I don't like being cold, but I sure like to look at them!)
If this isn't beautiful, I don't know what is:
The snow was so perfect. I mean just the right amount of powder. Deep powder is kind of hard to ski in (for me, anyways) without fat skis, but this could not have been any better.
Well, I mean it could have been just a little warmer I guess. My face was frozen half way down the first run!
It's hard to complain about the cold, or anything for that matter, when this if your view though.
There was hardly anyone on the slopes! I went down one run and just stopped and looked around...and I was the only one in sight!
But seriously...these views...
After several good runs that morning, I skied down to the town of Aspen (seen below) and walked around the shops.
Turned out I wasn't the only one who was pumped about the powder day! There were several shops that were closed with signs in the window saying "Gone Skiing" or "Powder Day" - haha!
I grabbed lunch at a build your own burrito type place in town, and then decided to ski at Snowmass for the afternoon. (My ski pass was good at both resorts, so I needed to make the most of it!)
Snowmass was only a 30 minute drive or so from Aspen, but I just wasn't as impressed with it. There's just something about Aspen I guess.
I did a few laps there and was pretty worn out. Too tired to make it to the back bowls. So I hit the road back to Carbondale late afternoon. I mean, the lifts close at like 3 anyways, so I wasn't missing much.
Oh, and this was back in Glenwood Springs, where I drove back to to get gas because it was an entire dollar cheaper per gallon there versus what it was in Aspen!
Mt. Sopris again...just love that view.
I had an hour or two before Jackie was going to be home from soccer practice...and instead of being productive, I just took a nap! Skiing is hard work when you're not used to it!
That evening, Jackie and I met up with a friend of mine from Carbondale at a new barbecue restaurant in town. The food was okay -- I mean, it was no KC barbecue. But the company was fantastic. We heard about and got a picture show of Mike's recent trip to Europe that I semi helped plan.
We were tired pretty early so just went to bed at a decent time that night. Or we got in bed, anyways. We stayed up fairly late talking and laughing and sharing stories, like a junior high sleep over, haha. Sometimes Couchsurfing is just the best!
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