Veg Out III: Day 4-Vail

Because we had heard so many good things about Vail, we were all very excited to be heading out. We made a pretty small mistake of not checking on weather conditions before heading out in the early morning hours, a mistake that would definitely come back to bite us.

The drive was through fairly mountainous terrain and as we winded up towards the top, the wind and snow started to pick up. During the drive, BlueBerry mentioned that Google was an awesome place to work because of the free food they provided and how he loved to drink blueberries because they were the best berry. He also mentioned that there was no point of going out to eat because the food was worse than the food Google offered and he had an amazing DS that did everything but cure cancer. BUT, he left his omnipotent DS at home instead of taking it with him, a decision that would haunt him for the rest of our Vail trip.

The actual skiing at Vail was awesome. The resort easily lived up to its reputation as the most popular resort in Colorado. The powder was fresh, the hills were fast, and for me, the falls are plentiful. While Blueberry and jOrange were off doing the bowls, Catnipped and I stuck to the “greens” or so we were lead to believe. I am pretty sure I fell about a billion times.

Swingsville was the first trail we took. It looked like a relatively harmless green trail, but I ended up falling just about at every turn, managing to hit my head once and slightly twisting my neck. Towards the bottom, I had a very brief moment of competency where I managed to go down a whole hill without killing myself. This trail took about 1.5 hours to go down and at the bottom, Catnipped asked if maybe I should head inside to sit down a bit. Stupidly, I suggested that since we still had a good hour or so until lunch, we should try to do another less deadly green trail.

Ramshorn obviously sounded tamer than Swingsville so we took that trail. What I didn’t know about Ramshorn was that the trail inexplicably had blue AND BLACK sections inconspicuously mixed in throughout the trail. These sections of the trail were particularly enjoyable to me as the fresh snow made my falls look rather spectacular, with snow, skies, poles, and my vertebrae flying everywhere. At this one turn, Catnipped was able to turn right and reach the side of a nice little hill. I on the other hand, couldn’t turn worth crap and went straight down this ultra steep hill, quickly wiping out while losing both skis in the process of hitting my head and twisting my neck again. A nice lady going down the same hill helped me get my skis on, a process that easily took 10 minutes. She then gave me some advice to try to go to the right a bit to get off the steep part. Before she could even finish, I was off going down the same hill again because of my awesome stopping abilities. Again, I wiped out and she had to help me again with my skis. It was at this point that she told me this particular part was a black diamond trail (South Look Ma). Eventually after a long time and many bruises, I managed to make it down the hill, a process that only took about 2 hours. Who knows how long it would have taken if I hadn’t tumbled through about 3/4^th of the trail.

On the other side, jOrange wasn’t having as great a time either. He had managed to lose one of his skis on the second trail and spent over 2 hours in the freezing wind and snow looking for it to no avail, even bending one of his ski poles in the process. Finally, with no other options left, he called the ski patrol which promptly found the ski in less than 2 minutes!

After lunch, I was pretty beat up, jOrange was super tired from digging in the snow, and Catnipped was also very tired from the “green” trails. We three stayed to recover in the lodge while Blueberry went off and did some more trails. At the end of the day, we three took the lift down the mountain while Blueberry skied down the hill, easily beating us down.

On the way back to Boulder, we started running low on gas and decided to stop at Frisco for gas. It was in the gas station that we learned that the road authority had CLOSED the tunnel back to Denver, effectively trapping us in Frisco. We went to a local Wendy’s for some dinner and to strategize our next move. With jOrange’s custom iPhone’s web capabilities (his sister) helping us, we basically found out that every possible road back to Boulder was closed. The only option left was to spend the night at an emergency mansion set up by the police. This would have been the perfect time for some DS action, but alas, BlueBerry had left it in Boulder. The one time it could have served a good purpose, ruined.

The mansion was indeed palatial. It had a huge reception area, room for over 300, and even served breakfast! Okay, it wasn’t quite that luxurious. The emergency shelter was at the local Summit Middle School. The reception area was the cafeteria, we had to sleep on the freezing cold gym floor, and the breakfast was basically cold cereal bars and pop tarts.

Before we left, my mom had given me some emergency survival gear. This included matches, some chocolate, and an emergency blanket. This emergency blanket was basically a specially designed piece of tin foil that insulated the body while providing a reflective surface for increased visibility. We decided Blueberry should be the recipient of this device since he would be driving the next day. Catnipped displayed her awesome culinary skills as I am sure that was the best turkey wrapping job that anyone could have come up with. We just needed some potatoes and carrots to complete our centerpiece. The blanket apparently worked quite well as Blueberry slept through the night. The rest of us were not lucky as both Catnipped and jOrange were freezing to death, while I wasn’t able to sleep because of neck pain. We all hoped that the highway would open in the morning and we could be on our way back to Boulder again.