End of the ski season :-(

Today was closing day for Arapahoe Basin. In a way it was kind of sad. It was pretty crowded and not much of the mountain was open. The weather was beautiful and I realized that it really did snow a lot yesterday. Most of the bare spots around the mountain were covered and the skiing was pretty good. My Dad arrived yesterday to hang out for a week of vacation. He was on skis and I was on my snowboard. People on the mountain were going crazy going off of jumps and pond skimming. It was a fun atmosphere for closing day.

I ended up skiing a total of 118 days at 10 different resorts in Colorado this year. This easily eclipses my skiing total for the previous 22 years of my life combined. Between January 22nd (my first day of work for Mountain Safety) and April 18th (the Breckenridge employee party) there were only three days that I wasn't out on the snow. Two were because I was sick and one was after my broken nose. Last night at dinner the waiter pointed out that 122 days of skiing is 1/3 of a year. If it weren't for my injury I would have easily exceeded that. I had a great time. Colorado had an above average year for snow which kept conditions good until today (Although California had one of their best years on record. Mammoth received nearly twice as much snow as Breck). You would think that after skiing so much I would be over it, but it is exactly the opposite. I have so many other skiing related things I want to do, resorts I want to ski at, trips I want to go on, and skills I want to work on. I guess I am doomed to being a skiing fanatic the rest of my life. I still have about another month in Colorado to have fun. I will be shifting from skiing to other outdoor activities like mountaineering and mountain biking.