After 8 years, I finally made it back to the slopes...

Last weekend, I headed out to Colorado with a few of my friends from college for 3 days of fun on the slopes!! I was SUPER excited about this trip for two reasons: 1) I LOVE skiing. 2) I haven't been skiing since 2003 when Keisha and I moved from California.

My buddy Ken was gracious enough to cash in some of his Starwood points for this trip, and he was able to score us a room at the Westin right next to Beaver Creek. The hotel was awesome, and the location could not have been better!! We skied Beaver Creek with our full crew (Ken, Roberto, Rob, and myself) on Friday, then Ken, Roberto, and I skied Vail on Saturday and Beaver Creek again on Sunday.

I almost made it through the entire trip unscathed, too. I ended up taking a pretty good fall on literally my last trip down the mountain that actually knocked me out for a few minutes! Thankfully, my friend Roberto was skiing with me, so he was able to get me up and back to the hotel. I have absolutely no memory of the fall or the last part of the trip back to the hotel, despite the fact that, according to Roberto, I skied all the way back to where we were staying just fine! All in all, I have a 30-40 minute gap in my memory. I went to the doctor this week just to be safe, and everything checks out just fine. The only lingering pain I have as a result of the crash is in my left shoulder and my right thumb - I'm so mad at myself for crashing so close to the end of the trip!!

Along those same lines, I was pleased to see that basically everyone on the mountain these days is wearing a helmet (including everyone in our group). When I last skied in 2003, that was not the case whatsoever.

At Vail, we spent basically all of our time skiing the "Back Bowls" of the mountain. For those of you who haven't been - Vail is HUGE!! It took us almost 2 hours to get over to this part of the resort, but once we were there, we were glad we made the trek! Would you believe that Vail has received over 31 feet of snow so far this year???
Beaver Creek is much smaller than Vail, but that isn't saying that there's not a lot of room there. The skiing on Friday morning was UNBELIEVABLE! We were in fresh powder that was up to our knees in some places, which makes for a very fun trip down the mountain. We hit the top and left side of the mountain on Friday and basically stayed on the extreme right side of the map on Sunday.

Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera along on the trip, so the few pics that I have come to you courtesy of my BlackBerry.

Here's our crew (minus Rob):
from left: Roberto Gois, Ken Woodruff, Ryan Stearle

Here's a shot of Ken taken in a small lodge at the tip-top of Vail. I bought 2 bananas and a turkey and cheese sandwich in this lodge for the bargain price of $13.50. Seriously.

Roberto and I in the same lodge

This was a pic from the top of one of the peaks at Vail. Trust me when I tell you that the beauty of this environment doesn't fully translate in this image...

Lastly, here's a shot atop Beaver Creek