I took off on Friday morning with Todd and Morrissey to Silverton. Kristen stayed home to hold down the fort. She made it into Denver to visit her Aunt Penny and Sister Allison, but otherwise had a quiet weekend.

I survived the Silverton trip, and had a lot of fun in the process. I thought I was going to probably die only once. I was more than a little scared many times.

On our first run, we hiked up to near the top of the "Billboard", the strange structure on top of Silverton Mountain. We then proceeded to snowboard down one of the smaller chutes.


It was quite a first run, luckily it was by far the most difficult of the trip. The hiking was arduous, starting at 12,000 feet, and going up to about 12,750 feet.


The other option was to take the helicopter, but at $150 per run, it was a bit pricey for us, especially considering how poor the snow was.


There were quite a few runs that caused even the most experienced in our group to pause before dropping in. Not only was the slope exceedingly steep, there were often large rocky obstacles to avoid.


The three of us did have a lot of fun, and will probably make it back next year. It certainly has made resort boarding seem a lot more tame.

I'm all packed up and ready to head to Silverton in the morning. In a fit of snowboarding excitement, I uploaded another video from the Winter Park trip. It's shot from a helmet cam, so the quality is pretty low.

This last weekend involved an early morning trip to the Train Museum in Golden. Kristen and I met up with Allison, Joni, and Maddock. We arrived to find the place overrun with children, all very excited to wander around the various trains.


Maddock was pretty excited himself, and would sprint off in random directions yelling "TRAINS!". It was an exhausting couple of hours, Maddock slowly lost steam, and we eventually got him in the car.


On Sunday Kristen went for a big run, I biked into town to grab some lunch and met up with Morrissey. I spent a lot of time setting up the new home computer, it was fairly functional by the end of the weekend.

This upcoming weekend for me involves the big Silverton trip. Silverton is usually discussed in hushed, revered tones. I've heard many whispered stories about Silverton over the years, and am finally going to get to experience it first hand. It should be a pretty big adventure. The "easiest" way down has a slope of 35 degrees, which is pretty impressive. We'll be doing a lot of hiking at elevation, hopefully making it up to the summit of 13,487 feet. We'll see if our lungs and legs can hold up.


Kristen's already rolling her eyes as I practice packing my backpack. Just wait until tomorrow night when I strap the board on in the living room in order to sight in the helmet-cam!

Kristen and I headed to Nederland last Saturday to check out the annual "Frozen Dead Guy Days" festival. The usual crowd of mountain people, sightseers, and generally interesting people showed up.


It started snowing pretty hard during the parade, but that didn't seem to slow anyone down.


A nice selection of hearses showed up, no flame throwers this year.


The coffin race teams also were also in the parade, a few looked a bit chilly.


We ate lunch in town, then drove around the mountains a bit in the snow.

Sunday involved sleeping in and me spending most of the day at work. Kristen and I did get a good run in in the evening. Training sessions have started up again, so it's time to dust off the legs.

Kristen also braved the garden meeting alone, we managed to hold on to half of our plot from last year. The increased interest in gardening resulted in half plots for everyone, and a lot more politics being played out. She did run into an ex-coworker of mine from way back in the Core Systems days, making the world seem a little smaller.

Two Saturdays ago, I headed up to Winter Park with Morrissey and several other friends. We rented the same condo that we were in last year. The snow started out good, and the weather was warm.


Luckily on Tuesday we got 7+ inches of fresh snow, although it was extremely wet heavy stuff. It was still a lot of fun to be up there mid-week with fresh snow.


Kristen showed up Wednesday night, the roads were nice and clear all the way up.

It snowed a bit more (4+ inches) on Thursday, luckily it was a lot lighter this time around, and made for some of the best boarding of the trip.


Kristen, Morrissey, Diane, and I tried our luck skiing on Friday. It's been probably 15 years since I've skiied, it was amazing what a change of perspective it brought on. Runs that I wouldn't even notice on a snowboard suddenly became terrifying chutes of death. Luckily we all survived, and it was good to remember what it's like to be new to the sport.


We did a bunch of hiking to less accessible spots. Vasquez Cirque once again was the most exciting, we wandered over to a few steeper spots than what we're used to. They were steep enough that you couldn't see the slope in front of you, steep enough to get the butterflies going in your stomach. Fun stuff!


We're planning on going to Silverton later this month for a guided ski tour. Hopefully it's still snowing, it promises to be quite an adventure if it all works out. I've got my avalanche probe and shovel ready!

Kristen and I are back from Winter Park. I'm struggling with getting any pictures or video out of the new cameras, so a full report will have to wait until later.

The trip was a lot of fun, I certainly got my fill of snowboarding. It feels good to be back in a familiar bed and eating normal food again.

More to come!

Happy Valentines Day! Happy Birthday Dad!

Kristen and I went out for a pre-valentines day dinner on Friday night. We ate at The Cork, which is a relatively well known Boulder restaurant that I hadn't been to before. The food was great, and our waiter's French accent was fairly hilarious. I half suspected he was putting us on, but he never slipped out of character, so maybe it was real...

We exchanged gifts, Kristen gave me all kinds of great stuff, including this Pabst Blue Ribbon "Tall Boy". You can see the excitement in my eyes.


Saturday evening I tried to recreate the famous Maxwell House "Roma". It turned out a bit bland, the Alfredo sauce was a bit boring. Oh well, it still tasted good.

Sunday we generally took things easy, and watched a marathon of "Flight Of The Conchords". Good stuff.

An exciting week at work awaits. Thursday and Friday involves a few corporate visitors, we're having our "Tech Summit". Hopefully we'll impress everyone with what we've been doing in the last 6 months or so. If not, back to the tree house for me!