Winter Park, CO 02/15-02/18/2007

I spend President's Day weekend in Winter Park, CO with Rosie and part of her family (Zach and Pily,
Zach and Jessica, Sarah and Adam, and Mark). We were flying out of Austin into Denver around 6.30 am on Thursday, picked up a rental car and made it up to Winter Park just on time to start snowboarding around 9.30 am. Rosie missed out because she wanted to meet up with the other guys first and settle in. Thus, I was riding alone on Thursday, checking out the ski area. Unfortunately, Timberline lift, which goes to the top of Parsenn bowl, was closed due to wind. Since Rosie's brother was supposed to join us on Friday, I had rented a motel room downtown (America's Best Value Inn), while the others were staying at a really nice condo at the Lakota district. However, a snow storm hit us on Friday, so that Benny never showed since they closed Berthoud Pass. Also, they closed down the lifts by 10.30, so that we only got two or three runs in. Those runs were awesome though, perfect powder conditions. But the winds were too strong for the lifts to operate. The next two days (Saturday and Sunday) were pretty intense, I was riding mostly with Zach, Mark and Adam, which turned out to be really exhausting :) Also, all the interesting runs were plastered with big ass moguls. Of course there were excellent tree runs, too. The Bowl opened back up Saturday and Sunday, however, quite surpringly, the snow of the previous day had already been gone; the wind had blown it away. Saturday was a lot less busy than expected since the pass was still closed, Sunday on the other hand turned out to be one of the most crowded days of the season. Rosie only got to ride on Saturday, fell on her face and got treated to a massage by her sister on Sunday. We came back Sunday night around midnight. I highly recommend Frontier Airlines for travel to and from Colorado, they have really good deals on flights ($200 AUS-DEN-AUS).