Tag Archives: snow day

Welcome to the new version of my little snippet of the internet. Whatcha think? You best like it…because I kind of do so I won’t be changing much. BUT, if anything isn’t flowing/working for you let me know, I’ll whip it into shape!

I’ve been living in Summit County — the home of 4 big Colorado mountain resorts — since December. My mountain job came with the perk of a season pass. It takes about 15 minutes to get from my bed to the base of a ski run. Yet, somehow, I’ve only been on the mountain 6 times this year. That’s sad. Really sad. Especially when you consider the fact I managed to get nearly 30 days a few years ago when I had to drive up from Denver every stinking day!

I’ve decided I like being one of those weird people who enjoy running in the snow. Sometimes it’s more like “running” but, who cares, snow is fun! If you throw on the right layers you will not freeze to death and gaiters were invented for haphazard veering into snow banks, right?! I fully understand that not everyone feels this way about the snow but it sure is fun to drag snow/cold haters out onto the wintry trails and see them at least sort of have a good time!

That’s exactly what I did with half of my weekend…forced friends into playing in the snow! Because it’s more fun when you have someone else out there “suffering” with you, right?! I’ve never been one to hate on mountain bikers on the trails and after Saturday morning’s run I won’t be complaining any time soon – they did a fantastic job of tracking out the trails for us! No gaiters or traction required in Fort Collins!

We got snow! Northern Colorado FINALLY got a decent amount of snow! And I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only one weirdly excited about it! We’ve gotten snow a few times this year, but no major accumulation [ie: 4+ inches] and I’ve missed nearly every snow day since before Christmas so I was pumped to get outside and play in the snow!

There were big plans for a long run on Saturday morning with friends, but they all bailed because roads were supposed to get bad that afternoon [and 20+ mile runs take a LONG time in snow, so roads were a valid concern]. I decided I was still going to head for the trails for a little snowy fun. My initial plan was to run a 7 mile loop twice…then when I hit my first hill I changed my mind.

I am headed into my fourth winter in Colorado and for the past three years I’ve kicked off the season by strapping on my snowboard before October 31st. This year has been a little different, to say the least, but I never expected for December to roll around before I had an opportunity to frolic around in the snow. But alas, I didn’t even take my snowboard out of its bag until December 5th! What is this world coming to?! What has happened to “love all things mountain-y” priorities?! Why am I letting silly what-grown-ups-are-supposed-to-do excuses get in the way of my fun!?

Honestly, I can’t even make up good lies to answer those questions so I’ll distract you with mountain photos instead! On Saturday I finally got a chance to layer on my winter gear and wait in weekend lines at Keystone. Only a small portion of Keystone was open but it was still worth the trip. We did a few loops on the [busy + rocky] front side of the resort then took the Outback Gondola to the back side in search of solitude and legitimate snow cover.

Spoiler Alert: we found snowy tree runs! Yes! The front side of Keystone was littered with icy patches, toppling children and rocks, but the back side?! As usual, that’s where the magic happens at Keystone. The groomers were rock-free and the trees were tracked up by still hiding pockets of fresh snow! But really, no matter where you went on Keystone it was refreshing just to see snow after knowing how bare the runs were just a few weeks earlier when I hiked near Peak One with a view of Keystone’s back bowls.

In my world you cannot work your way all the way to the far back side lift at Keystone without hiking a bit…so hike we did. We didn’t make it far before the snow started to thin, just a few hundred feet past the North Bowl/South Bowl sign. But that was good enough for us! The true beauty of tree riding is the solitude you get. Even on busy days the trees are not a popular place to be! Plus, when there are almost not back side trails open the lift lines on that half of the mountain are nearly non-existent, a huge weekend riding win!

After a few hours of riding we decided we needed to head home…we had a very important experiment to execute. There was a sparkly new oven just chilling in a newly remodeled kitchen that needed to be tested out and it became clear to us that baking cookies was the only possibly way to ensure the oven was fully functional! Two batches of cookies were baked and many samples were tasted but we eventually came to the conclusion that not was the oven working properly it was VERY good at backing cookies! In true cool kid fashion we topped off our Saturday night with multiple airplane heists + evacuations on Grand Theft Auto, a long drawn out game of Settlers of Catan and few major eye rolls at “A Million Ways to Die in the West”. Yup…I think my Saturday kind of rocked!