This ski trip is dedicated to Yvonne.  She was so happy about the trip and everything associated with it.  She improved her skiing ability tremendously, making fluid parallel turns, improving her speed down the mountain, and having almost no fear of the fall line no matter how long or steep.  It was fun to watch her smile as she stood at the top of copper bowl on Aspen, looking down a seemingly endless very steep run down the mountain saying, "Well, this looks like fun"  and meaning it.
       But I'm ahead of myself.  We flew to Denver a day ahead of our skiing so we could spend the day with Linda Sari, our friend since 1962 when Yvonne and she roomed together in NYC.  Arriving on UAL at 11 am we had the whole day to share. Yvonne decided we should store our skis and luggage at the airport to spare Linda the bother. They ripped us off to the tune of $54 for one night's storage, but it was the right thing to do, and gave me something to rag Yvonne about for the rest of the trip.  Linda picked us up and took us to her lovely condo on Washington Park in a beautiful section of Denver.  It had just snowed and Denver looked like a winter postcard.  The girls gabbed about girl things and we took a pleasant walk around the lake in the park.  We treated Linda to dinner out and enjoyed our time together.  Linda gave up her bedroom to us and we hit the hay pretty early in anticipation of the eight o'clock flight to Aspen the next morning.
       Flying in so early, we were too early for our room at the Wildwood Lodge at Snowmass so we used the lobby bathroom to change into our ski clothes and were on the slopes by ten thirty.  Also even though the NASA-KSC Ski Week director, Richard Miller had made special calls to assure our lift tickets would be ready for us (the rest of NASA wasn't arriving until Jan 20), of course, the tickets weren't there.  That caused a bit of a hassle but we got it solved.  After a near record early December snowfall, the faucet was turned off and Snowmass had had very little snow for weeks.  The base was advertised at around thirty inches, but we discovered you can't trust Resort Sports Network on the computer.  They reported seven inches of new snow the past forty-eight hours and the folks we talked to said they had maybe one inch.  At any rate the groomers did miracles with what they had to work with and the runs were in remarkable shape.  This was our third trip to Snowmass so we were familiar and comfortable with the area.
       Snowmass is divided into four main areas.  To the left or East and farthest from the base area is Elk Camp.  It is an area of very easy blue (intermediate) long cruising runs through stands of fir trees.  It is a fun place for refining skills with one more challenging run, Gray Wolf.  Moving West the next mountain is served by the Alpine Springs and High Alpine lifts.  Here the blue runs are a lot more challenging.  Unfortunately a fifteen year old boy was killed on one of them two days before our arrival although the circumstances are strange because the hills aren't that difficult.  Yvonne didn't care for these runs but I loved them.  Above this area is the High Alpine.  It mainly has expert mogul runs, but thankfully has one expert smooth hill called the Edge.  This was probably my favorite run of the week, being steep and long, but not bumpy.  Of course the character of every hill changes daily based on the snow conditions.  Still to the West is the Big Burn.  It is awesome as you crest the first ridge and see the expanse of snow; very few tree since a major fire years ago, just about a half mile width of snow.  It looks deceptionally flat up there, but you have to watch out because the grade is actually fairly steep and you can get going way too fast before you realize it.  There are about six runs on the Burn, all intermediate, ranging from the learner's favorite, Sneaky, and progressing to harder and harder blues named Micky's Gully, Dallas Freeway, Wineskin, Timberline, and Whispering Jesse.  You can spend the day on the Big burn.  Finally is Sam's Knob.   There's a couple of easy ways off the Knob, but it is mostly expert terrain both smooth and moguls.  I loved the smooth ones and skied them a bunch.  I'm too darn old for the moguls.  Give me smooth, steep,  and fast.
       We learned quickly that the meals were excellent, expensive and overly abundant.  Sharing meals or having a couple of appetizers was the key and we usually still couldn't empty our plates.  The Village Steakhouse located in the Wildwood Lodge was exceptional and we had a delicious sirloin one night and walleye pike another.  Across the mall we dined at the Tower, once owned by John Denver, and it was also elegant.  The Wildwood served a complimentary full breakfast each day, and we'd eat lunch in one of the on-slope restaurants.
          Finally the NASA group arrived on Saturday with our friends, John and Melinda Tribe. After flying UAL to Denver they had a five and a half hour bus ride to Snowmass.   We enjoyed dining with them and showing them how to navigate the mountain.  John had broken his collar bone at Big Sky last year so had a little apprehension.  Despite that Melinda thought he still skied too fast.  Yvonne and I started the week with severe colds and John and Melinda both felt ill for separate days while at Snowmass which limited their skiing those days.  We wish we would have had more time to share with them.
           On Wednesday Yvonne and I took the free skier's shuttle over to Ajax Mountain (Aspen) which has a reputation for being a tough mountain for advanced skiers only.  In fact they have no beginner runs, but the intermediate ones aren't difficult.  We rode the gondola up to the top at 11500 feet and did about four or five runs at the top.  They were hard packed and suffered from lack of snow. We decided to head back to Snowmass and skied all the way to the bottom.  That's where Yvonne impressed me with her new found skill and courage.  In fact we enjoyed the long ski to the bottom so much we rode the gondola back up and did it again.  What a girl!.
            My USNA classmate, Jim DeFrancia and his lovely bride, Cynthia, invited us to join them for cocktails at their fantastic home in Aspen on our last evening there.  After drinks they treated us to a fine dinner at Guidos in Aspen.  It is always great to get together with Naval Academy friends and rehash all of the good and bad times as midshipmen.  I enjoyed talking with Jim so much, although I think he'd agree I monopolized most of the conversation.  I had found Jim because of the USNA 63 web site and his work as the USNA 63 Foundation Treasurer.
           Finally it was time to leave paradise.  We had quite an adventure getting out of Aspen and for a few hours thought
we'd be begging Jim and Cynthia for a bed.  We fly standby since Dean is a UAL pilot.  We were listed for the 0701 flight.  At about 0630 it started to snow like crazy .  We made the flight list and we and our luggage boarded the plane.  About thirty minutes later they deboarded the whole aircraft because landing visibility was below minimums in Denver and takeoff visibility too low in Aspen.  Then they canceled the nine and ten o'clock flights. Therefore they rightfully took our seats away from us for paying customers . Our luggage stayed on the plane and we figured at least it would get to Orlando.  It's enough to make one prematurely OLD!  At about 1100 the snow almost stopped and the visibility improved so they started reboarding the 0701 flight without us of course.  They just kept putting people on that plane from all of the leftover canceled flights.  I was sitting near the counter knowing we weren't going anywhere for a long time when I could see that they were getting desperate to close out the flight but that they looked like they still had a few seats left since they were paging standby paying customers like crazy.  I heard the ground manager say they had to close the doors so I stood up waved my vouchers and asked to fill the empty seats.  He grabbed our tickets and said to get on the plane.  Whew!!    We finally took off about 1145 and arrived Denver at 1220.  I quickly checked the board and saw that the next Orlando flight left at 1248.  Luckily it was only a couple of gates down the terminal and we got there to find it was full.  Just as they were closing the doors we were called and got the last two seats on the 757. Had no idea where our luggage was. Just another couple of minutes delay in Aspen and we would have been stuck in Denver until at least 1700 or later.  Got to Orlando and our luggage was virtually first off of the plane... and the parking shuttle bus was at the door.  We were so lucky!