Snowmass Ski Trip
March 11-24, 2003

View Snowmass Photos

This has been a strange one.Yvonne and I saw that Aspen/Snowmass had had about twenty inches of snow so we decided to make one more ski trip.  We left home on March 11 flying first Class from Orlando to Denver and then the short twenty minute trip over to Aspen.  We stayed at the Wildwood Inn which is the best bargain at Snowmass. We paid $109+tax per night with full breakfast each morning. The adjacent Silvertree Hotel charges about $200-300 per night. The Wildwood is about a one hundred foot walk to the Fanny Hill run and there is a reserved rack for our skis so we donít have to lug them back and forth every day.
Instead of deep snow we arrived to a record setting heat wave. Denver saw 76 degrees several days and it reached 60 here.  The snow was hard packed but it held up pretty well as long as we skied the highest parts of the mountain.  Snowmass is made up of several different peaks; Sam's Knob, Big Burn, Alpine Springs, High Alpine, Elk Camp, Creekside, and Campground.  Yvonne found good runs at Big burn (Sneakys) and at Elk Camp (Gunner's View) that she really enjoyed.  I skied the more challenging black diamonds on Sam's Knob (Slot) and at High Alpine (The Edge)  and a hard blue at Elk Camp (Gray Wolf) and Big Burn (Whispering Jessie). We stayed in touch using our Talkabout radios which I call our "marriage savers" since we can ride up the lifts and find each other for lunch.
One early run down Slot I ran into an instructer who asked if I wanted to ski with him.  We took about three turns and he yelled, "STOP!" He then proceeded to give me a free hour lesson on proper technique.  I learned a lot but now am confused and canít ski worth a damn. Actually I think he helped me.
We had several great meals at the Tower, Il Poggio, Village Steakhouse and Pasta O Pizza.  Surprisingly we had several lovely mussel appetizers that were to die for.  Meals for two of just appetizers ran about $25 and full meals without appetizers or dessert were about $60 for the two of us.  Once I had a great bouillabaisse, and we had a fine filet migon .
On the 17th they started warning of a big storm coming the next day.  We skied a few hours and decided to leave town a day early to beat the storm.  We left the slopes at 10:30 and caught the 11:00 bus to the Aspen Airport.  The valley was socked in so we sat for six hours and seven scheduled flights while no planes came in or departed.  It was kind of sick fun watching each new flightís passengers come into the airport, glance at the monitor and think, Good our flight is still scheduled.  Then to see them deflate as the flights were each canceled.  I think there are nine daily flights from Denver to Aspen and back so that's about 1500 passengers either not getting into or out of Aspen. Eventually all flights were canceled and we returned to the Wildwood where we cleverly had not checked out. The storm hit with a fury giving us a couple of feet of snow overnight and Denver got hammered with the Denver Airport being completely shutdown for two days and four thousand stranded passengers sleeping on the floor at DIA.
On the 18th we decided to make the best of it and skied the deep powder confirming that deep powder is just to darn much work.  I was skiing Mickís Gully in about two feet of snow and it was too much work so I bailed out over to Sneakys which only had about eight inches since it had been groomed sometime that night.  Yvonne and I skied together all that day on some of the lower slopes that were well groomed and then at Elk Camp that had a "noon groom" and was very nice.
Now it is the 19th of March and we decided to take a day off from skiing. Yvonne is at Aspen shopping and gawking and Iím here writing and planning to read my book.  DIA is still completely closed so we're not going anywhere soon.  First they have to start flying. Then they have to clear the paid passenger backlog.  Finally sometime in the future there may be a standby seat for us. As the Tribe's emailed me.  If your given Snow, make a snowman.

I write this from the Best Western in Shreveport, LA. With no flights in or out of Denver. We stood by for a
flight from Aspen to LAX on Wednesday night. they called our names and we reported to the gate only to find out that was just step one.  Eventually they went through
the paid standby list and got down to us, but they only had one seat left.  I wanted Yvonne to go on but
she wanted to hang together so we returned to the hotel where we spent the night. The hotel informed us
they were full with reservations and we'd have to check out the next day so now we were flightless and
homeless.  Thursday morning we again went to the airport to try for the one Aspen to SFO flight for the
day. The ticket agent told us to not even try since the flight was full and had over twenty paid standbys.
 I went to Avis and they had no cars. Thrifty wouldn't give us a car to go out of state. Budget wanted a $900
drop off fee plus regular fees. Hertz had no cars but said we could wait for one. Just a moment later a
couple came in and dropped off a Mazda and I grabbed it up.  Told Hertz to not even clean it and we headed
off for a total fee of about $480 with no mileage fee or additional drop off.

This was Thursday and I70 was still closed East of Vail pass. Fortunately we were able to exit I70 right
at Vail on highway 24 which winds through the
mountains past Leadville and eventually over to I25 which runs South. It was a beautiful ride through a
snow covered landscape on a cleared road that kept us in awe.  At the New Mexico boarder the pass had snow
about six feet deep along the shoulders of the road. We drove across the corner of NM into Texas and were
going to stay in Clayton, TX but the stockyard smell was so strong that we couldn't stand it so we
continued to Dalhart, TX and spent the night at a small Best Western.

Friday we drove all day in the state of Texas from 0700 until 5:30 pm until we got to Shreveport.  The
bypass around Dallas was unbelievable. It took us a
couple of hours just to go about 50 miles. another place I don't want to move to!  Then there was a lot
of road work on I20 in East Texas, but eventually we arrived and the Best Western here is beautiful. We ate
at Copelands of New Orleans for some Cajun food, which wasn't up to Crazy Cajun standards for those who've
been to Clear Lake at Johnson Space Center. Now it is 6 am Saturday and time for breakfast and back on the
road.  We'll probably drive to about Tallahassee and then on home on Sunday. We're enjoying our adventure.

After the above we drove past New Orleans to Slidell, Louisiana where we bought a cooler of crawfish and a six pak of beer. We sat in a little city park and stuffed ourselves. Afterwards we drove to Tallahassee, Fl
for the night and then an easy four hours back to Orlando. we are home safe.
Steve