'Twas the Day Before Christmas...

'Twas the day before Christmas and all upon the mountain, skiers and boarders were stirring, and I was among them.

My friends and I were all bundled up to stay warm...the forecast was for a cold winter storm. With anticipation we dreamed of the snow to be skied, so we drove really fast to get there with speed.

We had to take two cars driving just as fast as they can, but that was okay 'cause Hannah's father's Norwegian (inside joke).

We rode the lift at Copper when what should belay all our fears? No more than eight- that's right eight- other skiers.

I sprang from the lift to avoid going back down the wrong way, and came to a stop so my friends and I would not stray.

Once we got started, the skiing was fine. Oh fine indeed, like a well-aged wine. We skied (Brian snow plowed) and we had a good time. And that was not fair- he only snow-plowed part-time.

Mike was fast, REAL fast- he pointed downhill and went. And Brian was unafraid, to heck those bumps he sent.

Hannah skied like an ace- she even stopped "gracefully" on her a#@ like a snowboarder. Not an easy task, when you are a ski sporter.

We rode and we jumped, and we fell a few times too; On all kinds of trails- green, black, and blue.

Pizza Carlo had good lunch and good cheer. Thanks goes to Mike (and to Brian for beer).

We got some more runs in, and had a good time. But at the end of the day, they closed the lift line.

So we pack it all up, we loaded and went. And to my dismay, came the end of the event.

But that is okay, because there is next week, then another. But for Brian and Hannah, there's only cross-country with her mother...

(I don't even know her mother, and have nothing against cross-country- though it isn't alpine- it was just the best way I could think to close the thing...sorry Hannah's mom Susan...)A friend of mine (Brian) whom I haven't see for fifteen years looked me up the recently and contacted me out of the blue last week (or, as he puts it, "stalked" me). We used to be the Head Outbound Rangers at a high adventure summer camp in Oregon, teaching Rangers how to conduct mountain climbing, rappelling, and backpacking trips and outings. We were also the biggest practical jokers in the camp (don't worry, we never did anything to anyone while they were dangling over the side of a cliff or roped in on the face of a glacier...I think). There was this one time when we...oh, yeah. Sorry.

So, he looked me up and we went skiing at Copper Mountain (www.coppercolorado.com) on Wednesday (Christmas Eve) with his wife (Hannah) and her father (Mike). I was surprised at how few people were there (good for me, not-so-good for the resort). I counted three times all day where I came into close proximity with another skier, and only one time that a group of snowboarders were clogging the run.

My friend has only been skiing four times in the last five years- the same four times he has been his entire life- and he was pretty good. Seriously. He was really good (he is one of those guys who was just athletic and it would aggravate other people because he could do things quickly and other people-read that "me"- had to work for years at them). His wife and father-in-law were both self-described intermediate skiers. The snow was great for all three, and they weren't sliding around gaining too much speed to control themselves, and he was able to enjoy some more difficult runs earlier in the day because of the snow quality.

We skied a lot of groomed runs, and the snow there was pretty good overall. Copper has gotten a decent amount of new snow in the past couple of weeks (at the time of this writing, the folks at Copper Mountain are reporting 67" in the last month, with 20" of that in the past week), and has had some pretty good weather, so the snow was nice to ski on. We started out on Easy Feelin' and Woodwinds Traverse (both green off the High Point lift) but skied mostly on Wheeler Creek (both green off the Rendezvous lift), Coppertone, Carefree (both green off the American Flyer lift), and Bittersweet (blue off the American Eagle lift). In the afternoon, after the wind had been going, the groomed runs did start to get a bit hard, but the bumps were nice when I moved off the main runs under the lifts.

Later in the day I did peel off for a few runs and skied Lower Enchanted Forest (black off the Rendezvous lift) and was able to glide though some beautiful knee-deep December powder. There were no tracks, the trees were beautiful, and the skiing was simply heaven on Earth to be cliché. For my last run, I took the Super Bee lift up and rode Oh No (Blue) down the East side of the mountain, dropping into Rosi's Run (black). Over on that side of the mountain, the wind didn't seem to be hitting the runs as much resulting in two things. First, the snow wasn't getting blown off the side of the mountain, leaving what came down in place. Second, the snow that was there wasn't getting iced over in the afternoon; even the groomed snow was smooth to ride on. It was a great day for intermediate skiers and, if what I got in toward the end of the day is any indication, advanced skiers had a pretty good one too.