Vail

It snowed all day today. It wasn't supposed to ... but it did ... because it's Vail - and Vail is perfect :)

Disclaimer: I'm really, really, REALLY tired tonight. I think it's a combination of caffeine deprivation, altitude, dehydration... and ALL the skiing. I'm tired... but a good story happened today... I have to share. (Hopefully all of the English majors reading this entry will cut me some slack on typographical errors and such).

SO... a few years ago Shanon Madrid nicknamed me U-Turn on a backpacking trip. I started to take offense to it... but I had just gotten us lost on a hiking trail... so what could I say... right?

WELL... today I suggested that we ski Outer and Inner Mongolia. Those are wooded bowls... a little remote area in Vail with hardly any traffic at all. Karen in the Mongolian Bowl.

Karen and I are skiing along having a great time in the fresh powder when i start noticing that there aren't any other ski tracks around us. I was getting kind of nervous but didn't really panic until we ran slam up against a rope marking the boundary of the resort and there were NO trails ... only a thickly wooded forest to the right. We had to ski into the woods... and it was scary. Really scary. We kept moving and moving... and NEVER getting out of the trees. I started thinking about the food that we had... the overnight temperatures... freezing to death. Seriously - I'm scared. I fell so many times. I face-planted in the snow... I'm talking snow in my mouth... powder in my pants ... wipe out in the trees. I apologized to Karen at least 10 times for getting us in that situation... she was freaking out too. Karen Freaking Out

Well... obviously we made it out of there... because I'm typing this story right now. We had a good laugh about it at lunch... especially when we got out the trail map and realized that we were ACTUALLY in the Siberia Bowl... not even the Mongolian Bowls... where I THOUGHT we were.

U-Turn... whatever.