My First Blizzard!

So Michelle and I took the day off yesterday to recoup and get ready for a great day today.  The two days that I have snowboarded at Winter Park have been enjoyable but extremely tiring.  If you have ever been boarding, you know that flat terrain is a snowboarder’s misery.  And it seems like we found flat terrain more often than nice blue or blue-black runs.

So today, I switched to skis.  It’s been ten years since I have skied and I have only been skiing 3 day s in my life.  But all in all it was a good day.  I picked skiing back up relatively quickly but then out of nowhere, a blizzard hit the mountain.

At around 2pm the wind decided to pick up to about 30 mph with a wind chill of -20.  I mean it was seriously out of nowhere.  If you have seen the movie “The Mummy” it was like that sandstorm that came out of nowhere.  We were enjoying a nice blue run near the top of the Winter Park mountain when the wind and snow came with a fury.

It was actually scary.  I began trying to recall any “Man vs. Wild” episodes that I have seen where Bear Grylls has to weather snow and extremely cold conditions.  We couldn’t see 5 feet in front of us and we weren’t close to the bottom.  

It took us about 30 min in the blizzard to reach the bottom and then they sounded the emergency horn from base.  As it turns out, this was a legitimate blizzard.  

We are in the condo now, warm and safe, and the snow has cleared.  

Everything considered, it was a great experience.

We may ski again tomorrow.  I really enjoyed not having the strap in every time I got off of a ski lift.