USA 09/10 – Beaver Creek Day 3 – More sunshine!

Our second day of skiing here at Beaver Creek started at the same time as yesterday, although we were ready a little earlier this morning. We had a quick breakfast, and were out on the slopes by 9:40am. We skied a similar track to yesterday, taking the main lift (the Centennial) up the hill. Luckily there was no queue at all this morning – even less than yesterday morning’s Sunday crowd.

Corduroy in the morning

We tackled a few more runs today than yesterday, and explored a little more terrain in the once again perfect weather. Early on in the day we check out the Rose Bowl area, somewhere we had avoided previously as it seemed fairly remote. This chair turned out to be an older triple chair (much slower than most of the other lifts around), which was fine except that a little pushing and shoving while we were getting on resulted in Pip missing the chair and being left behind to catch the next one. She wasn’t particularly impressed with this show, but this probably inspired her to beat Ed down the slopes a number of times during the afternoon.

We skied a few more runs – a number of times on the Redtail run – then stopped again at the Spruce Saddle (half-way up the mountain) for lunch. As quiet as it was on the slopes, it was still packed inside, and we had a bit of trouble finding a table. In the end we shared a large table with another group from Australia (strangely enough) who were here for 8 weeks (are you serious?!). We didn’t spend quite as long indoors today, and headed back out to the great conditions soon after finishing our meals.

Carving on the new skis

Most of the afternoon was spent on Redtail (again, seems like it had become our favourite run) taking action photos. Pip managed to get left behind our chair again, similar to this morning, but this time it was due to indecisiveness as to whether we were going for this chair or the next. It was getting late in the afternoon by this stage (about 3pm…… ok it felt later than it was) and so we started to make our way home. We did, however, venture into the kids area which involved a Gold Mine – complete with total darkness while skiing along – and a number of other sights which made the ride home interesting.

It didn’t take us too long to get back to the room, and certainly didn’t take much time at all to get out of all our snow gear and into some more comfy clothes. We relaxed on the couch for quite a while, continuing the Secret Life of an American Teenager marathon that had started the day before, until we got interrupted by the housekeeping staff who had not yet made up our room. While they were working we thought on many occasions that they had finished and left (due largely to the amount of time it took them to do simple things), but when one of the started emptying the dishwasher, mopping and sweeping the floors, and then vacuuming (while we were all sitting in the same room, watching TV), we certainly knew they were still around.

Great scenery

The vacuuming was just the final straw, however, and we soon after asked them to leave. We watched another episode or two before getting dressed into some warmer clothes and heading into the village for dinner. While we had no idea which restaurant would take our fancy tonight, pasta was a meal of choice so this at least helped direct our search. In the end we chose the Beaver Creek Chophouse, and everyone had a healthy meal (by comparison with other things we’d eaten). Dinner was nice, and we were soon back out in the village collecting some essential supplies that we’d run out of since Saturday.

We decided to walk back to the hotel rather than catching the shuttle, and realised that the walk was much quicker and easier on the way down the hill than back up it. Nonetheless, the short walk was over soon enough and we escaped the cold (about 11F) for the last time today. Another episode of Secret Life, and a new show Make It or Break It, later and we were all so tired that we headed for bed at 9:45pm.

With any luck, the nice weather will hold up again tomorrow and let us explore more of the mountain in more detail than we have so far. The first day out with the helmet cam was good today, but we’ll adjust the angle a little tomorrow to hopefully get more people and scenery and less snow flying past!

Have a look at some more scenic (and action) photos from today here, or check out the photo mash-up below if you want the quick version!

About the Author

Scott

Web designer, graphic designer, coder, scripter, photographer, musician, performer, entrepreneur (and the list goes on) based in Adelaide, South Australia. Scott loves to experiment with new ideas, and OnSno.com is his creative dumping ground.