Utah Ski Trip

Here is the recap from this past weekend. Wednesday night I headed down to Milwaukee from Appleton. I stayed at Preston's place. And to my surprise, Preston was able to scramble together a game of cards on a Wednesday night. Excellent work Preston. We played cards until around 11. My flight to Utah was at 6:00 a.m. meaning I had to be up Thursday at 4:30 a.m. I made it out to Utah by the late morning and met up with Krum. We headed to Deer Valley right away and skied all afternoon. The skiing was OK. Visibility was pretty bad. Thursday night our group all met up at the condo we had rented. It was Russ, Goob, Jen, Krum and myself. We jumped in the hot tub and then went out for dinner. Friday we skied Snowbird. This was a big powder day. I am not a huge fan of skiing in powder because I don't get too many chances to ski in powder snow, nor powder snow that was that deep. So it was a bit of a challenge for me. Our group was made up off some pretty good skiers, me being the worst of the group. Most of the runs on Friday were black diamond or double black diamond runs. They say, if you aren't falling, you aren't skiing hard enough. No problems there, I hit the deck a number of times. The final score on Friday was, Mountain 1, Rickie 0. We skied about 6 hours on Friday. That night we hit the hot tub, and I was in bed by 9 that night. Too much fresh air. Saturday, Krum, Jen and Goob did some back country skiing. I.E. hiking up the mountain and skiing down. I didn't have the equipment nor the will to climb up any mountain, that is why I buy lift tickets. Russ and I opted to go and check out temple square where the Mormon Tabernacle is located and then head to Park City to catch some of the Sundance Film Festival. The Mormon stuff was a bit creepy. It was a short tour of the buildings, but more of a preaching of the Mormon religion. The film festival was pretty cool. The movie we caught was called "Reversions". I would like to give you are review of this movie, but I still don't know what it was about. Russ tried to explain it to me that the theme of the movie was that you can't change your future, even if you know what your future holds for you. I still didn't like it. Saturday night we had dinner at Tiffany and Steve's place. They are friends of Jen and Goob. Jen and Goob used to live in Utah. It was great having them there, to be tour guides of the area. We didn't get home Saturday night, until actually 2:30 Sunday morning. Sunday we headed back to Snowbird. It was around 5 hours of skiing. This was actually my best day of skiing. I had two days in, and a day of rest, so my legs were pretty fresh and my form had come back a bit. Traveling back home was brutal. I left Utah at 6:30 and didn't get into Milwaukee until midnight. Add another hour on to that waiting for my bags. And with an 1 1/2 hour drive to Appleton, that all adds up to me not climbing into bed until 3 in the morning. I will say one thing for the Salt Lake City ski resorts, they have absolutely beautiful house all around in the resort towns. Deer Valley was amazing because these million dollar homes are right on the mountain. It is also nice skiing out there because the resorts aren't more than 30 minutes from downtown Salt Lake City. I also want to thank Russ for setting up the trip. And Krum, Jen and Goob for making the trip the great time that it was. We all talked about making this an annual trip. Here are my photos, I wished I had taken more as we skied but my hands just go so cold. Hopefully Krum will send me some of the pictures that he took this weekend to post here. Here is no shock to anyone who has skied with my out west, I got altitude sickness again. I was taking supplements before hand but that didn't help too much. Here you can see what was left of my lunch Friday afternoon. Although I was fine by Friday night.Krum back at the condo. I will just let you leave your comments on Krum's hair.This is the Mormon Tabernacle.Inside one of the buildings in Temple Square. This is where the famed choir performs. The building was built in the 1800's. And that pipe organ is the largest in the world with 11,000 pipes.Some of the scenery of Salt Lake City. One of the best things about Salt Lake City is that it is surrounded by mountains, so anywhere you look, you always see the mountains. However, I learned that this is also a bad thing, in that it keeps all of the air pollution in the city and they have serious smog problems.The Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. It was a pretty cool scene. They had 9 theaters set up in Park City and then 4 more in Salt Lake City for the films. I just wish we had seen a better movie. But the fact that I do enjoy movies, it was a cool experience to be there.

Here is the roll call of our ski group. Krum.
Russ.
Jason, is one of Russ' buddies that lives in Utah and skied with us on Sunday.
Here is Goob, who is also regular blog reader from California.
Here is Jen, Goob's wife. Originally from the Salt Lake City area.And of course, here I am. The picture isn't the greatest because I dropped the camera in the snow. But as you can see, I had some issues with my ski poles. I fell on them one too many times.