What follows after the break is a story that I wrote for my climbing partners to read via e-mail after I had an encounter with a new climbing partner I met online here in Colorado. The events took place in November 2006, and I sat down that night and wrote this story. After I e-mailed this off to my buddies, it got forwarded around to THEIR friends and eventually posted on a couple of climbing message boards. I was out in Eldorado Canyon climbing last weekend and shared a belay with another climbing party who had read this story online - I couldn’t believe it had gotten around so fast. Anyway, here is the story… more…

Monika and I got up early a few weekends ago and took the kids to the hot air balloon launch in Erie. The launch was scheduled for 6am, but everything was running a bit behind and most of the balloons didn’t take off until around 6:30am. Samuel and Benjamin had a good time watching the balloons inflate and take off against the backdrop of the front range, and Monika and I were able to snap a few good pictures. Afterwards, we had a good pancake breakfast in Boulder and went back to our house for a nap.

This season was probably my best for skiing/snowboarding. Monika, Samuel and I had a blast whenever we went out, and we made the time to try to get up to the mountains whenever we could to slide around on the snow. Samuel learned to ski this year, and Monika’s riding just keeps improving. I switched back to skiing for the first part of the year (and whenever Samuel was with me), then snowboarded towards the end. I think I got in 20 days of riding this year, and hit most of the resorts that I wanted:

Eldora is close to home, kid-friendly and you don’t have to get on I-70. The downsides are no high-speed lifts, smaller terrain than other resorts and the season’s pass and ticket prices are about the same as larger resorts. Winter Park is great, lots of terrain, many blue runs and variations to keep it interesting. Copper is also great, the runs there are naturally segmented into beginner, intermediate and expert across the mountain. Breckenridge has a lot of good terrain over several mountains, but this makes it hard to get around if you want to ski something different. You’ll find yourself traversing back and fourth, but the upper bowls and the Imperial Express lift (highest lift in North America) make it worth it. I had my best powder day this year at Keystone, untracked knee-deep powder in the upper bowls. The downside? Hiking 1.5 miles to the bowls to access it. It felt like Keystone had some of the longer runs on the main mountain, and I had a great time riding there with Monika on easier trails, too. A-Basin is awesome, there are no high-speed lifts, but it has some great terrain, chutes and steeps. And it’s usually open through June! Great local mountain. Telluride has great views and terrain, but I was kind of put off by the McMansions all along the lower trails. Crested Butte seemed to be a great place to ride, but when I was there the snow conditions were poor and we weren’t able to access a lot of the expert terrain, something they are known for.

There are only a few other resorts I really want to hit in Colorado next year, Steamboat for the vibe, Vail for the bowls, Wolf Creek for the powder and Beaver Creek for the cookies in the lift lines.  I would also like to snowboard at Silverton, their setup seems to be a good mix between backcountry and lift-accessed riding.

Monika, the kids and I went to Florida this past weekend for a friend’s wedding. We had a great time soaking up the sun and playing in the pool. The weather was great, much warmer than Colorado in April where swimming outside isn’t such a good idea. While we were there we had the opportunity to drive down to the Everglades and see some wildlife along the way. We had a good, fun, mostly relaxing long weekend! I put together a set of photos of our trip on my Flickr page.

A lot has gone on in the past month, my parents came to visit us in Colorado and spent a busy week with us.  Samuel and Benjamin had a good time visiting with their grandparents, and we got to see parts of CO that we hadn’t seen before.  Samuel has taken an interest in taking photos, so we gave him our old camera - a Canon Powershot G1 to play with.  It’s interesting to see what a 3 year old wants to take pictures of,  he certainly has a different perspective on things than we do.  I’ve uploaded some of his pictures to my Flickr site.