We rise late... at least for this trip. It might have something to do with going to bed early--about 9:30 or so last night. Dylan and I were the last ones to bed down; we stayed up and read until about 10.
Catherine (executive chef) and Beth (sous chef) cook flapjacks and sausage for breakfast. The boys man up and chow down while the rest of us take it a little easy.
Some of us (Craig) go for the good stuff. Nothing wrong with a little engineered nutrition for breakfast and ramen for lunch. At least for Craig.
The Gang of Four leave as the advance team to scope out the conditions. We hit the gondola from Avon over to the parking lot at about 9 am. Parker is still working on gearing up.
Craig tells Parker to man-up and take the Mandall.
We get stuck on the Lower Beaver Creek Mountain Express for about 15 minutes while the staff contemplate whether to allow folk who stay in Avon onto the mountain. The tag line of Beaver Creek is "not exactly roughing it." Based on what I saw today, it works. It also makes me wonder how many people here are here to ski. I'm pretty sure I saw a lot of people that don't exactly like the sport. Whatever. Here, it's about being seen in the right places with the right clothes and the right gear with the right people. At least for some. For the rest of us it's about a hard day of fun!
We get up past lift 18 and enjoy the awesome scenery that Beaver Creek offers. I forgot how beautiful it is here.
Craig kindly snapped a photo of the Parker crew at the top of the Centennial lift. Thumb's up baby!
We head from lift 18 over to the Birds of Prey and up to the Zoom Room where Dylan starts his day of throwing down in the park. His game in the park improves about about 3-squared today. It will be great to see what he is doing by Saturday.
I. The Zoom Room
II. Dylan hits the kickers in the Zoom Room
III. They don't call it the Zoom Room for nothing
Speed is radar controlled at The Beav--or at least so they say. I think I get why. A big portion of the mountain is groomed to within an inch of its life and is very fast. This encourages people to ski at speeds beyond their abilities. Plus there are a lot of people here. Most of them don't really want to ski and don't really know how which compounds the danger and adventure factor.
Dylan hits the Lumber Yard, the half pile and The Rodeo Terrain park. For the rest of the day.
We go through the Bear Cave and the gang hits the half pipe. The pipe here is at least 18 feet. I ski through and nearly get vertigo. I have a newfound appreciation for the world class pipe riders. When you get in, it's a lot bigger than it looks on t.v. Twenty feet out of a twenty plus foot pipe is a lot of air. Dylan gets his legs right away. He's not quite getting out of the pipe yet, but give him a day or two.
The pipe is cool, but The Rodeo is cooler. All the mountains here have enormous parks with lots of features that range from easier to insane. The key element of a good park apparently is a cool name.
Dylan opts to skip lunch, which is good since he's having a blast and we're going over to arrowhead which is a five-mile ride to the other side of the mountain (like I said, this place is BIG). Jay and Ruthanne bring lunch and the girls put on the high fashion.
We head out and do several high speed runs off the Arrowhead--which is perhaps the best cruising I've experienced anywhere. Few people venture over to this side, even though it's tame enough for beginners. Moreover, the runs have lots of S-turns and rollers. We have a couple of great runs down Little Brave, the last of which is skiercross Bob v. Parker. What a kick.
Craig lost his ticket somewhere over on Arrowhead and is ready to call it a day. The lifties recognize him and let him take a couple of rides without the ticket. We're going to work our way the five miles back over to the park, and Craig rolls the dice and comes along. He doesn't have his pass, but he paid his money. We ride back to Chair 18 which gets us back to the upper mountain. He's ready to grovel if necessary, but the liftie is having his snack and doesn't scan us. Karma lets him back onto the upper mountain where he spends the rest of the day without being scanned.
Parker, Craig and I ride up Grouse Mountain Express and do a quick run down Screech Owl. The bumps are surprisingly good--we'll hit that later in the week. We then run up the Birds of Prey where we separate--I go to find Dylan over at The Rodeo and Parker and Craig stick to the upper mountain where Craig won't get scanned.
I catch up with Dylan on Centennial and we get a run down that and a couple more down the Cinch through the Zoom Room. The rope is up on the last run, but we duck and get one final ride.
We do the 4.5 mile run down the Zoom Room, through the Lumber Yard, down the half-pipe only to get roped off at the Rodeo. Oh well, it's getting late.
I. Dylan scales the 18-foot level of the pipe
II. Dylan rides the pipe
We accept that it's late and ride to the bottom. We ride the three escalators (this is Beaver Creek, walking is for the poor and infirm) to the bus stop. We see Parker and Craig in the line, but they don't wait. We get on the very next bus down to the gondola that goes over the creek and back to town. We see Craig and Parker in line for the gondola, but they blow us off and don't wait. You'd think it was 1977 all over.
There's about 1000 people on the bus and it's hotter than hell so we can't wait to get off. We jump at the gondola rather than staying on the bus, and arrive at the Weston (hoy hoy!) ten minutes later. We walk five minutes back to the condo and call it an awesome day. To top it off, we chill for a few and then go over to the community center where we sit in the hot tub with the vacationing cartel folks. Awesome.
Three days, three different ski resorts. Nothing like a little variety to keep things interesting. And fun!
Tomorrow: Vail!
