It’s go time on the slopes!!!

Here we go! Four years ago, we got to spend a couple of weeks working and skiing in Vail and Keystone/Breckinridge with the boys joining us for the second week. We also finished the trip driving through New Orleans where I got to experience one of the lowest points of my life - hoping not to repeat that this time! Fortunately I’m not too worried!

After a nice breakfast provided by the hotel, where just about everyone is from Australia, New Zealand or is from a mixed family of Canadian/English/Australian decent with one Japanese parent. Anyway, language is definitely NOT a barrier. After getting picked up and driven to the gondola, another great way to start the day (Denise would like this door to door service everywhere we go!), I got our tickets downloaded from the ticket machine and off to the gondola we trotted.

Weird fact, the gondola did not have doors in the side like we are used to, but the ends rotated open, so two people went in the front end and two in the back end and then you sat back to back. Took me a second to realize what we were doing and where to go. Thankfully there wasn’t a line as I’m sure I would have been the butt of a gondola joke - having worked at a gondola, trust me, we talk and laugh at all of you! We are equal oppty in that respect though, we even laugh and talk about each other!

Once up the mountain, it was time to see if our legs still knew what to do! And by golly, they kind of did…. yeah, we made it down the first slope, but I wouldn’t say it was completely smooth sailing. While it may be like jumping back on a bike, this bike definitely wobbled a little going down. While Japan was pounded in January and early February, it’s been brutally warm the last two weeks, so the bottom of the mountain was hurting some. Up top though, the snow was a great spring slush - heavy but not terrible. It had not gotten below freezing though so nothing had hardened over. All in all, I was loving it.

Skiing here is kind of like a mix between skiing in the Appalachian’s, just with snow (a bunch of smaller resorts all near each other) and skiing in the northeast (roughly the size of the resorts). Happo-One, where we skied was the site of the 1998 Olympic Downhill race. While the ski area wasn’t large, it as big enough. We managed to make it down and around most of the mountain, avoiding the bigger bumps and hanging out on the “kind of” groomed slopes.

The craziest part was the comparison to the Alps. The treeline must have been about 6000 feet, and the steep peaks really did remind one of the Alps. So while we were skiing at a level where oxygen wasn’t at a premium, the views were worthy of oxygen thin environments! And while having a bunch of JaPOW to ski in would have been quite the experience, with our older legs and having not skied in a number of years, things worked out perfectly for us on the slopes!

After a great morning with a number of runs around the mountain, we headed in for lunch at the gondola building, I had been eyeing that teriyaki chicken bowl since we first got to the top of the gondola! Two full meals, some warm miso soup (which wasn’t really needed as I had been pretty much sweating up a storm on the mountain, definitely over dressed but as my mom taught me, better to be overly warm than cold!), and two beers (complete with frosted mugs - I love this place) and all for under $30!!! I’m sold, ready to come back, who’s with me?Read more