We’re starting to seriously loose track of time. (Especially since I actually wrote this Dec 10). That being said since my last post, we have skied a few more resorts and mostly been dealing with some van annoyances.
After Lake Granby we headed to Winter Park Ski Resort and spent a day on the mountains. It was a cloudy and chilly day, but we still covered a lot of terrain. By the time we were ready to head back to the van, it took us nearly 2 hours to find our way back to lift we started at. Turns out Winter Parks signs are not very clear, and having most of the runs on the front of mountain closed complicated things.
That night we headed into Silverthorne and stayed at La Quinta, cutesy of Eric’s brother and all his points. THANK YOU! We also got a surprise visit from the point master himself. We prepped the van and ourselves for another day of skiing. (the usual: laundry, fill water jugs, shower, wash dishes, use Instant Pot)
We spent the next day at Keystone. There was an unexpected twist at this resort. We could hike beyond the saddle to the outback, which is a backcountry area past the tree line. We were gifted with a truly powdery and magical run. Needless to say our fancy new skis and boots performed perfectly. We have the Atomic Hawx Ultra Xtd boots (130s and 110s respectively) and Black Diamond Helio 105 skis. That night we kind of struggled to find someplace to park, since Colorado is apparently quite anti-camping or even just overnight parking.
Saturday we ran a bunch of errands. Found out my phone apparently has a faulty antenna, which is why I have never had LTE service. So at some point I’m going to have to part with my phone. We drove around a lot on Saturday, and discovered the winter hours for the National Parks Service do not include weekends. But we got very lucky and ran into some Rangers who advised us of a perfect overnight parking trail head just past Copper Ski Resort.
So, we headed to Mayflower Gulch to stay the night. Turns out that trail is quite the local legend and in the morning there were already plenty of people skinning up for a day in the backcountry. Because of this we decided to ditch our plans of skiing at Copper that day and skinned up. That decision did not disappoint! We followed a nicely groomed path to a bowl that had some dilapidated log cabins and hiked up to the top of one of the hills. We had stunning views of the mountains and skied down some thick powder. By the time we got back to the parking lot it was jam packed with even more people.
The rest of the day we chilled and spent some time stealing Starbuck’s Wifi to download shows on Netflix. For all those looking for a new show to watch, we highly recommend Adam Ruins Everything. We also managed to find an overnight parking lot in Frisco, YAY!
That brings us to today, we spent the morning skiing at Copper Mountain. We quickly discovered our “resort” skis probably need a good tuning, since they couldn’t carve anything and made getting down moguls practically impossible. We called it early and headed back to the van to cook up some eggs and sausages. Eric fiddled and double checked our electrical power system set up, it’s been acting up recently. Then headed into town for groceries and to steal Wifi again.
Due to the very cold weather, unpredictable night parking in Colorado, and electrical power system problems we are trying our best to get out of Colorado. Surprising, we know. We plan to be in Utah by Christmas, then back to California in the early New Year. But who knows, our plans seem to change hourly.
We’re going to start something new and put up this list at the end of every post, to keep track of our adventures.
Adventure Tally
Resort skiing: 6
Backcountry: 2
Rock Climbing: 1
Hiking: 1
Biking: 1
It's a Van Good Life 