New Year on the ski slopes in Utah
Trip Start
Jun 24, 2007
1
45
46
Trip End
Jan 15, 2008
Salt Lake City, Utah
Friday, December 28, 2007
The snow was quite amazing - plenty of it with light snowfalls falling in the first few days creating the perfect powder conditions for skiing.
Tom and Rob took a couple snowboard lessons and were away - Greg and I not so fast!! Greg found his ski-legs much faster than I did, and although I was up and away on the easy slopes within a day or two, the confidence levels were low, and the knees groaned a bit.
Evenings were spent enjoying drinks, devouring hot chocolate and popcorn, toasting marshmallows around the outdoor fire pits, eating out, enjoying the hot tubs or simply vegging in the centrally heated condo with hot soup, pizza and a movie.
Had a great New Year's Eve at a very special restaurant called 'Zoom', but didn't manage to stay awake to see the New Year in - bodies were battling to cope with the energy drain from long days on the ski slopes.
1st of January 2008 was an eventful one. Rob broke his arm whilst snowboarding, and was rushed down the mountain strapped in a snow-mobile to the emergency unit where the break was confirmed and put in a temporary cast until we could get to an orthopod in LA. That put an end to his last 3 days on the slopes and I quite happily hung up my skis too! Rob was so disappointed as he was doing really well, but took it like a man and started planning our next bout of skiing in New Zealand!!
Laura and Brynn, who we met on the Nile Cruise flew in from Denver to meet up with us for a day which was great fun - learnt all about eating 's'mores' - (toasted marshmallows with melted chocolate squashed between two honey biscuits) - yum!
Steffen, Deborah and Peter are very experienced skiers and had Tom and Greg scaling the difficult slopes like real pros towards the end of the week.
The week ended far too soon and we had a dreadful flight back. Left Park City at 4.30pm and eventually got home to L.A. at 4.00am the next morning in what should have been a 90 minute flight. One announcement whilst waiting to depart in Salt Lake City was that the plane wouldn't start - and they thought it was battery trouble! Great - we all had to evacuate whilst they tried to fix it and a few hours later we were back on the same plane hoping for the best. We eventually got LA in really bad weather, but the congestion on the ground was so bad that we had to wait two hours for an open gate to disembark. LA International is something else - definitely an airport to avoid if possible.
So glad we got to enjoy this amazing week on the ski slopes, but even more glad that we left it to the end of our trip and took out extra travel insurance cover for snowboarding!!
