Vail

Just got back from Vail where we had 17" of snow in 48 hours. Tuesday was nice with some fresh powder so Ray & I hit it pretty hard all day. Spent most of the day in the back bowls looking for staches of powder. Had some great runs and basically wore ourselves out. On Wednesday his Macedonian buddy Dragon, who works as a Beaver Creek Ski Instructor, came over to join us. He wanted to show us the best places to go. Seeing as how Vail is H-U-G-E (over 5,ooo acres of skiable terrain) we were stoked! Started off on the backside of Game Creek Bowl and made it to China Bowl where we tried to head down Genghis Kahn. Except there was too much snow! I tried to head down and ended up with snow up to my waist and couldn't move forward! It took over 10 minutes to push myself over the edge. It was crazy! Our goal was to get to Blue Sky Basin and we ended up in one of the first chairs. The snow report had 11" of fresh but we were seeing twice that. To end up on one of the first chairs in Blue Sky was a huge score. We had first tracks most of the rest of the morning. It was truly epic. And exhausting. I had cramps in my quads by 2 pm. People were hollering for joy all over the place. What a great day.

The picture is from an incident that ocurred on a lift in Blue Sky Basin the day we got to Vail. Here's the story -

JANUARY 6--In a bizarre incident that will surely lead to litigation (or an out-of-court settlement), a skier at Colorado's ritzy Vail resort was left dangling upside down and pantsless from a chairlift last Thursday morning. The January 1 mishap apparently occurred after the male skier, 48, and a child boarded a high-speed lift in Vail's Blue Sky Basin. It appears that the chairlift's fold-down seat was somehow not in the lowered position, which caused the man to partially fall through the resulting gap. His right ski got jammed in the ascending chairlift, and that kept him upended since his boot never dislodged from its binding. As seen in the photos on the following pages (which were snapped by fellow skiers), the Skyline Express lift was stopped shortly after the pair's botched boarding resulted in the man dangling from the lift. The exposed skier was stuck for about 15 minutes before Vail personnel backed the lift up and successfully dislodged the unidentified man from the four-seat chair. The images on page four and five were taken by a local photographer who happened upon the rescue scene. In a statement released this afternoon, Vail Resorts, which operates the ski area, reported that the skier was not injured after being "suspended for approximately seven minutes." The press release did not explain how the mishap occurred, only that "the man was caught on the chair."