So last we met Sara and I were sleeping in a parking lot on Rabbit Ears Pass outside Steamboat, CO. On Thursday morning when we got up we went for a nice XC ski along the many snowmobile trails off the East Summit parking lot.
Thursday afternoon we headed down to Steamboat for a little snowboarding. Despite our very nice morning together, I engineered a dramatic way to end our post-ski bliss so we spent the afternoon snowboarding alone. Who’d a thunk that living in +/- 80 sq. ft. of space might eventually lead to some marital disharmony. I think riding alone was actually good for both of us as we did some exploring on our own without worrying about what the other wanted to ride. On Thursday night we went back up to the parking lot on Rabbit Ears Pass as Steamboat is quite aggressive in trying to prevent people from sleeping in town unless they pay for it. We managed to talk it out before bed, which is good because I don’t know where else Sara was going to sleep!
On Friday we decided to go for a hike instead of snowboarding. We had seen Rabbit Ears Peak and it seemed like a doable snowshoe hike from the pass. The East Summit is a complete snowmobile playground so we figured that we would be able to walk on mostly packed tracks the whole way. We were right – the tracks led all the way to the summit, though we had to do some minor route-finding to stay on the most direct route.
On Friday afternoon my cousin, Blair, was coming to Steamboat from Kansas. Blair and his buddy, Nabil, were nice enough to get an extra parking pass for their condo so we could sleep in the parking lot and use their condo for a shower. (Only three days if you are still counting.) On Friday night we also went to Strawberry Park Hot Springs. It is a super cool place and I highly recommend a visit if you are ever in the area. Fortunately we took Nabil’s SUV as I’m not sure the van would have made it. If it is snowing you definitely would not want to go without 4wd.
Snowboarding Saturday was as sunny and warm as hiking Friday. The snow went from icy, to soft, to slushy in places as the day wore on. Nabil is a powerhouse and essentially bombs every run top to bottom. He aims for first chair, last chair, and uses the singles line to make the most of the day. I’m not sure how we kept up without blowing out our legs, but we managed. I easily set a personal record for vertical feet in a single day – 34,982′. I did not set a speed PR, but I bet I set a PR for average speed as I just cruised behind Nabil all day. It was a very different feel than when Sara and I lollygag around the mountain together.
(We used the hot tub and took a shower Saturday evening. Only one day!)
Sunday was a much more challenging day. It started sunny, but a decent storm was predicted to hit by the afternoon. The soft snow of Saturday turned into an icy morning and it never warmed up enough to soften up. It was also super windy (gusts to 50 mph) and we had to bounce around as various lifts shut down because of the wind. We found some survivable groomers, but it wasn’t a morning for bombing.
By the afternoon the predicted storm arrived. The temperature dropped about 20 degrees and the snow really came down hard for a while. Somewhere in the range of 4″ fell between 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m.
The wind kept blowing snow back in our tracks and enough people had left the mountain that we had constant runs of nice shallow powder over a groomer. We kept at it hard through the afternoon and managed to shut down 5 lifts at the end of the day. It was wild. We were within a minute of last chair on a lift that closed at 2:30, one that closed at 3:15, one that closed at 3:30, one that closed at 3:45, and then they let us sneak on a chair at 4:02 that was supposed to have closed at 4:00.
I’m quite sure a palindromic 2-day total of 62,026 vertical feet is a personal record. It also matched the total of the 5 other days we snowboarded in CO.
Blair and Nabil had their condo through Monday so we stayed Sunday night and then started back to Oregon Monday morning. We need to get a few things finished and/or modified on the van so we can head north. We learned quite a bit on this trip and we want to make sure we can take care of as many little things as possible before we spend 4-6 weeks on the road. On the way back we stayed in Boise with two of our favorite people in the world, Ken and Jen Perkes. We had a very nice breakfast and chat Tuesday morning before driving back to La Grande.
Overall it was an excellent test run. We had a bunch of great days snowboarding, saw some friends, met some new people, did some winter hiking, and learned a lot about living in the van. We can’t wait to do it all again very soon!
Most excellent !!