Colorado resort offers affordable cat skiing
Peeking down through the tips of my skis to what lay below, I gulped the thin air and swallowed hard. My knees were shaking, my hands were clamped around my poles and my heart was on a drum roll. I was scared to death. And to top it off, this was what my friends had me doing to celebrate turning 50. As I looked at them standing there all excited about our last day of skiing, I thought only one thing. "I need to find a quilting bee!"
It started out friendly enough, a few days in Vail, Colorado. We'd hang out, do some shopping, ski a bit, and take in the spa. Eat the best food -- or pub grub.
You know the usual that half-centenarians do to bond with the aging gal pals.
Problem was the snow was epic. It was like the resort tweeted Mother Nature and requested a metre of powder to be dumped every time the moon came up.
How can you shop when best snow of your life is only 128 strides from your hotel door!
I'm not kidding -- I counted! We stayed at the luxurious Arrabelle at Vail Square and when you are too pooped to carry your skis, zero strides from your last run, the slopeside ski and boot valet will help you out of your equipment and store it for you.
We skied the first two days at Vail and Beaver Creek and to be honest, a day at each resort is not enough. Vail has 31 lifts reaching 193 trails that are covered annually by at least nine metres of snow.
Over at Beaver Creek, there are 17 lifts for 149 trails with close to eight metres of snow annually.
Even though we loved Beaver Creek and eating at the tapas bar in Osprey (which is even closer to the snow than the Arrabelle), at the end of the day, the vote was to spend day three back at Vail with Keystone saved for the last day.
Day three was the day Mother Nature messed up on the daily dump and brought it on after lunch.
It was a struggle to get through the new snow, but it was glorious. As we piled into the spa at the end of the day, I was determined to crown that as my last day on skis for the season. Because really, how could it get any better?
That's when Ann announced: "We're in!"
"In for what?" I asked.
"We are cat skiing at Keystone tomorrow."
Twenty years ago I would have been dancing the I-wanna-go jig. At 50 I was petrified. It's not that I can't ski, I can. But I'd never done cat skiing.
Was I turning into an old dog with no new tricks?
Keystone is another resort in the Vail Resorts collection and is only 60 kilometres east of Vail. We met up with the burly bearded guides from Keystone Adventure Tours (KAT) at the village, then headed up to get fitted with avalanche beacons and Solomon surf boards. OK, I'm kidding.
They were the fattest skis I've ever used. To remember whose were whose they were named after the latest batch of NFR bulls. Ironically my boards were "Scaredy KAT."
Along with a group of college boys from the east we piled into the heated snowcat. In a few minutes we were standing at the top of Independence Bowl at an elevation of over 3,700 metres. With me hyperventilating and doing the drum roll.
"OK," said Mitch our leader for that run. |
發表於 2011-1-11 00:12
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