Snowboarding at Keystone

Yet another fantastic day in Colorado! Keystone had 6” of new snow in the past 24 hours, so we both snowboarded. We got there just in time for the first lift rides up and rode on North Peak and The Outback all day. The snow was very good, and the weather was great – not as cold as it’s been the past few days, and very little wind. Brian’s starting to ride goofy with some proficiency, and Sarah’s snowboarding is getting better and better. We managed to ride from 9 to 4 with limited breaks. When Sarah decided she was done, we were at The Outback, the third of Keystone’s peaks, so we had to ride two more lifts and take two more runs to get to the base area. We were really done by the end! Still no pictures to post – the snow conditions were too good to waste time taking pictures.

We had an interesting run called Pika – it was signed as a blue run, so we took it, but it turned out to be a narrow run through trees. While we like glades, particularly when we’re on skis, they need to be pretty well thinned for us to be able to maneuver them on snowboards. The powder back there was great, but it took us a long, long time to wind our way carefully to the bottom. After the run we looked at our trail map, and it was really a black – the sign at the top of the run was just wrong. We’ll have to try it on skis sometime, though!

After our day of skiing, we went to Jake’s Dive Bar in Breck for happy hour and to hopefully watch the Seahawks beat the Packers in the playoffs. When we got there, the score was 42-20 near the beginning of the fourth quarter, so we got to watch the Packers run out the clock. (Sorry Lloyd!) But the food was great! A huge plate of loaded nachos, six chicken wings, and a pint of Budweiser for $8 – we love Breck’s happy-hour specials.