Days on the mountain have been hard to come by for various obvious reasons the past few years, but this year I got five days in (assuming I’m done at t-minus two weeks until baby girl) and in pretty cool fashion so I figured it’d be worth sharing. Big ups to my massively pregnant wife for allowing these to happen – the debt will be repaid!

Vail and Beaver Creek w/ The College Crew

We’re closing in on twenty iterations of this trip, of which I’ve only attended four or so since I didn’t pick snowboarding up until six years ago. Colorado has been a winner due to its central location, reliable snow, ease of access, and prices so we were back to familiar territory again.

Not too much to share other than it being bitterly cold and the Infiniti QX80/Nissan Armada being an absolutely terrible vehicle.

One bonus this year was Art being able to make it up for a night now that he lives in Colorado Springs. I hadn’t seen him in a decade, but it felt like not a day had passed.

Camper Van Overnight @ Meadows w/ Danny

I won a silent auction for a Wandervan around a year ago. We never found the right time to take advantage of it for a family trip so I was “forced” to make something happen before my credit disappeared. What ended up happening was a Thursday and Friday off work with some pretty solid snow, and getting a good feel for the ski-bum culture.

We were extra fortunate to have this fall at the end of the week because Danny has a good friend/coworker who is up there every weekend for his kids’ ski teams (he goes up a day before them to work/have alone time) who took us in for the night and made some outstanding boiled peanuts and Vietnamese stew. Had he not been up there it’d have been a very different six hours between boarding and bed.

The van itself was fine. It drove incredibly well (I understand why people pitch out more [although not double] for a “Sprinter” [Class B] setup over a Class C), but the overnight heat barely worked, it was pretty barebones, and other details had been missed. For what amounted to $500 a night after taxes and gas though, I’d not do it again. It would have been much cheaper to get an AirBnB for the night or a hotel room down in town. There was something to be said for waking up on the mountain beyond that 20 degree porta-potty deuce, but, yeah, I’d do it another way next time.