Category: Skiing

Skifest 2005: Episode II kicked off a little over a week ago. I was running a little late for catching the bus for my skiing class, so I decided to make the drive and extend the trip by nearly a thousand miles (I had been thinking of doing so all week, but I sortof made an impulse decision to actually do it). I called Grand Targhee and reserved a spot on the CatSkiing trip for Sunday the 20th. Drove to Hoodoo and went skiing for the day, had my lesson (blah!), and continued driving.

I’ll say I got a traffic ticket which I fully intend to fight, as I don’t feel I did anything wrong. Got to Boise around midnight and slept a bit. Hung around my brother’s house most of Friday morning until early afternoon (I knew there was now new snow at the ski hill, and I have a hard time skiing for extremely long periods of time alone anyways). Headed up towards Bogus and picked up my [$199] 05-06 season pass at the office along the way. Skied for 4-5 hours and made my way back into town. On my way through town, I saw the bar I left my debit card at (during MLK weekend), so I stopped to grab it and found a pizza shop not far away to grab some dinner (and lunch for the following day).

When I went to bed, I was fully intending on going skiing Saturday at Bogus again, but I woke up later than I expected, and felt I should really change my oil before the next leg of my journey. So I went to Schucks and picked up a case of oil, a filter, a drain bucket, and an air filter (realized I was due to change that anyways, and they had a deal when you bought both Fram air and oil filters). By the time I was done with this and packing up my ski stuff, I was still and hour late taking off, and I was on my way to Wyoming.

My brother had some friends renting a house about 30-45 minutes from the ski hill, and arranged for me to stay with them over night (as I had to be at the mountain by 8:30am). I got there, and they were a little soupy and playing Cranium. They asked me to play but I wasn’t much help. I ate my frozen lasagna and drank a beer and got to bed.

I woke up 30 minutes before I was planning to leave which was more than adequate, people were starting to wake up anyways. Lisa called up to the ski hill and there was TEN inches of fresh pow up there. I clicked into 4wd and drove up there, signed my release form and got dressed in the parking lot. Met everyone on the trip and we were off to cut the rope with the guides (who are also ski patrollers). The skiing was INCREDIBLE!! Snow was knee deep at spots, most of the runs we made were quite long. I’ve even got pictures!! They served us a nice hot lunch in the tent, chicken fajitas, rice and salad. At the end of the day there was stale grape juice and cheese (I’m not a huge wine fan). After it was all over, I drove back to Boise thinking I would ski on Monday, but that wasn’t the case. Monday I ran some errands with Pete and the kids, and left for Eugene in the early afternoon.

Skifest 2005 Part 2: Skied 3 states in 4 days, nearly 2000 miles on my truck.

Stay tuned for another installment of Skifest 2005 over spring break!!

I really need to get into the habbit of blogging when stuff happens. Blah. I’ll split it up into 2 entries or so to try to be reader-friendly.

So… around Martin Luther King Jr. weekend I had skied 6 of 9 (and subsequently 7 of 12) consectutive days. The Sunday before MLK weekend, I went to Willamette Pass and skied for about 3 hours (landed most of my 360 attempts), then raced home to watch the Vikings/Packers playoff game. w00t, the Vikings won, at Lambeau. Then Thursday I had my “Downhill Skiing” class at Hoodoo. I got placed in the group of people who ski better than the instructors, because I’m that good.

Then it was on to Boise, where I skied with my COUSIN!! at Bogus Basin, 4 days in a row. [edit 2/22/05: OMG PHOTOS] In the middle of that skifest, on Saturday after eating dinner with some extended family, Kristin (cousin from Minnesota, who I was skiing with), Kirk (cousin from Idaho, who I hadn’t met since I was maybe 2yo), his wife, and I went on the town for a few drinks and attemted to dance a little. The night started out great, some great stories were told, played some pool and foosball. Then I’ll just say things took a bit of a dive, and we headed home. Kristin played DD, and we all fell asleep and/or passed out at my brother’s house (Kristin and I were staying there for the weekend anyways). In all the commotion, I forgot my debit card at the bar. I realized this after we got home, everyone else was sleeping, and I was neither fit to drive nor did I remember how to get back there. I guess the point to this paragraph was I had to request a new card after I got back to Eugene. [edit 2/22/05: I got my debit card back on Friday. It was still at the bar along with at least 30 other cards]

Sunday, the Vikings were losing their playoff game against the Eagles(?) pretty badly, so we went skiing for the afternoon.

Then the following Thursday, I drove to Hoodoo for my class, and they were hurting BAD for snow, and my class was cancelled. Well they still wanted full price for the lift ticket, so I decided to make the best of the situation and drove another hour to Mt. Bachelor. I’ll say the snow was less than exceptional (worst. snow. evar.), but the coverage was there. I tried working on my 3’s, but I only landed one of maybe six attempts.

And.. I haven’t been skiing since. Skiing class was cancelled again last Thursday, as Hoodoo is now closed until they get more snow, and judging by the last time I was there, the [3 hour] drive to Bachelor isn’t entirely worth it. Maybe one of these days I’ll make the trek down to Mt. Ashland, and I am tentatively planning on going back to Boise and Bogus Basin / Pomerelle / (maybe) Grand Targhee over spring break. I think I’m on track to hit up more ski areas this winter than last. Wewt.