Ski Trip Report 3 - Monarch (again) Part 1 - The Back Story

Well, this could get interesting. I'm back from my third trip of the season, and I'm tired. In fact, I'm surviving on 4.5 hours of sleep, caffeine and sugar. Oh, and chocolate. You might need to excuse me at some points. I thought, however, that I would try something a little different and post a trip report on the day that the trip happened.

I was planning to go skiing this week, but not on a Saturday, and not to Monarch again. Not that there's anything wrong with Monarch. In fact, I love the place. The thing is, I had a free Gems card ticket, but it was for Ski Cooper. And, it had to be used mid-week before the end of this week. Oh, and Ski Cooper was only open during the week for this week. So, it was easy to use (really!).

I don't know whether anyone heard about the storm that blew through Colorado on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, but we got dumped on. That's the good news. The bad news is that we got dumped on, so the kids were off school for Wednesday and Thursday, and had a 2 hour delayed start on Friday. So, that blew out all my chances of going to Cooper. Oh well!

I talked to Nikki and we decided that Saturday looked open. So, I could go skiing. Given that there was no "free" option left, I decided that I wanted to go back to Monarch. Its a more challenging and interesting mountain for me. Cooper is a good place to take people to warm up (just ask Terri!), or to take the kids. Its reasonably flat and pretty safe, most of the time.

I hate these weeks for skiing, though. Colorado is invaded by visitors. That's a good thing, generally. However, I would prefer that they stick to big resorts like Keystone, Vail and Breckenridge. That sounds really bad, but I'm tired dammit! I'm tired of dodging people going every which way on runs, tired to looking out for "mommy and daddy" video taping junior as he skis to the lift, and tired of the peace and quiet of the trip up the lift being interrupted by teenage girls yelling to their friends down below. Most of all, I'm just tired.

The good news is, I made it back alive and in one piece. The bad news is, I'm not going to write the actual trip report tonight. I'm going to save that for tomorrow. Maybe that's good news. Who knows?

I'm going to let this stand, though, just to record my over-tired ramblings.

So there!

'Night