Sibling Ski weekend

M took Uncle W and Aunt M skiing 2 days while they were here--so I will let her tell you about their time.
Sunday morning we left early to head to Winter Park. It was pretty windy at the top of the bowl, but the skiing was great with light snow falling pretty much all day long.

After spending a nice evening relaxing at the local hot springs and spending the night in a cabin, we woke up to at least 6 inches of fresh snow on the truck.

It continued to snow as we left the Y to head over to Copper for another day of skiing. This is where our luck started playing out. It was a little later in the morning than we had planned to leave. After stopping to check out and use a quick bathroom break, we passed the Mary Jane turnoff at 8 am. The drive over the pass was slow with about 10 cars caught behind a slow camper. Once we finally passed, the snow continued to get worse and at the top of the pass the visibility was down to less than a 1/4 mile. When we reached the bottom just before 9 am the road was closed--we found out later it closed just after 8 am, which made us one of the last cars through. It took us another hour & 20 minutes to go 30 miles further west on the I-70--passing about 3 accidents along the way. Finally Copper came into sight and we quickly got unloaded and ready to ski another day. Since we weren't heading back to the SMR that night we didn't have a 3rd pass and had to purchase a day ticket. Here again we got lucky. Apparently the staff passes that had always been unlimited access had been changed this year to only include 4 days at Copper, which we didn't know had already been used up for the year. The first guy that scanned us let us through after commenting that his scanner said we were out of days. Was it because he wasn't aware of the rule change and assumed his scanner was acting up or he knew that the road was closed and we couldn't ski at WP that day or because we had bought one ticket he was just being nice. Who knows, but we decided to ski the top of the mountain most of the day and not head back to the bottom chair lifts. What a wise choice! The snow was awesome--at least a foot of fresh powder--as seen by M's ski pole she is holding up.

We spent 2 1/2 hours skiing the blacks (and at least one double black) at the top of the mountain. Most of the runs I wouldn't do in normal conditions, but with a foot of powder it didn't matter if you fell.

W cruising down the moguls which were buried under all the new snow.

M coming down through the powder.

Falling was almost as fun as the skiing!!! We headed into lunch at about 1:30 which means we didn't get on another lift until after 2. After scanning our passes the attendant asked if we had been using them all day. After saying Yes, he let us on the lift. We found out the next day (after a call to the HR office) that another staff had been turned away 2 days before for expired days at Copper and this change was something they weren't even aware of.

Finishing up the last run of the night.

Enjoying some adult beverages after a long day skiing. Then we headed back home with a detour to drop off the staff passes through another snowfall. Again we were lucky because one of the roads we were on that evening was later closed for avalanche control.

It was a wonderful sibling ski trip. The next two days, M and W went snowshoeing and went skiing one more day. A tiring, busy but very fun-filled week.