Aspen Road Trip

January 21 2007

Last week was exceptionally cold even for here. An Arctic weather system had moved in and temps dropped to below -20 with wind chills of -25 (luckily we didnt experience anything as bad as that personally). Bloody Hell. Jon and me did manage to make it up the mountain most days but the place was pretty empty and we could only stand a couple of hours at most! I did hear yesterday someone telling me that this is Colorado's coldest winter on record - well I can believe it! So there really was only one thing to do and that was hit the bars and warm up. After a particularly drunken Friday night with a few friends we have met we decided to go on another road trip - this time to Aspen.

So early Saturday morning we all set off on the 99 mile drive to Aspen Mountain. We had thought that the X Games were going to be on but thats because we were too drunk to realise that they were in fact the weekend after so that was a shame I would love to have seen that. The drive there was pretty non-eventful (unlike the lastone), and we arrived at Snowmass in great time to hit the pistes for the day. Our friends coming from Denver weren't so lucky - it took them almost 7 hours to get there (including an hour spent trying to find somewhere to park) as it was Martin Luther King weekend and the whole of Denver was escaping to the mountains. Anyway they finally arrived at 1.30 so at least they could get in a nice half day... Snowmass is a huge mountain that still seemed to be nice and quiet despite the fact that it was one of the busiest weekends of the year and accomodation was fully booked out for a full 30 mile radius.. (we had more than one piste entirely to ourselves that day) Welcome to the States!

After that we had to head to the hotel which as I mentioned was more than 30 miles away - fine in the car, not so fine on the bus to take us back for the night out - that took an hour and twenty minutes!! On our way back two of our friend were so drunk that they didnt actually get off the bus when we woke them up at our stop and ended up stuck on the bus trying to persuade the driver to bring them back to our stop!! ha ha

The next day we stopped by Glenwood Springs to soak in the nice steaming hot water surrounded by snow covered mountains - that was nice...
We also managed to call the kids in Nepal it was so nice to hear their little voices saying "I am fine.. How are you?" over and over again (they got a bit shy for some reason!). So today it's snowing again I have been out running and we are just deciding wether to stay here and watch movies or go out and brave the cold.. life is tough!

Caroline x