We took our time on Friday, having a leisurely morning with coffee and mountain views. Then, we booted up and hitched it over to the Frisco Station to catch our bus to Copper Mountain. It was a short, crowded bus ride, but we were all pretty stoked to hit the slopes on such a sunny day - Even our bus driver agreed that it was an abnormally beautiful morning in Summit County.
Copper was great. The skiing was much, much larger than I had thought it would be. Luckily, Taylor had a general idea of the layout, and provided us with some good advice on terrain choices. We stuck to the groomed blues in the center of the mountain for our warm up, and made our way to the Super Bee lift, doing laps on the lengthy cruisers and gladed sections between them. The lift system is pretty cool at Copper, with high speed lifts everywhere. This, combined with very little skier traffic made for a pretty epic day - And some genuine smiles:
Even though it was below freezing, the sun made it feel like a day at the beach at times. We took a moment to lounge at the base of the Super Bee while we waited for some of our group to finish carving up the mountain.
When all was said and done, we got 4 or 5 hours of solid skiing in, and made our way back to the bus (which we miraculously caught just in the nick of time). I think the altitude, energy expenditure, and fresh air was taking its toll on Taylor - I mean, we were all hungry, but...
Yea. It was a good day.
We packed up the next morning, and started our journey towards Telluride around 10:30. I wish I had pictures from the drive, especially the section of I-70 through Glenwood Canyon. Honestly, this was probably the most gorgeous, um, gorge, that I've ever seen in my life. Dramatic monoliths of striated rock revealed themselves around every corner in the road - I don't think I've ever seen anything that can compare.
We pulled in to Telluride around 3:30 (about the same time as the Hoofer's buses), and proceeded to unload all of our stuff before going grocery shopping, and scraping our jaws off the floor after seeing the prices at the market.
Megan and I had a little adventure after we dropped off the van at the free parking lot. We were told that there would be a free shuttle from the parking lot back to our condos... But when we arrived, there was a sign posted saying: "Service will resume 4/05/2010." Thankfully, a local happened to come by, and gave us directions to the Chondola (a combination chairlift/gondola), and we managed to find our way back to the condo. This makes us mountain survival experts in my book.
More to come on the first days at Telluride soon!
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