Day 17: Below 0

We woke up bright and early on New Year's Eve morning to be greeted by 7 new inches of powder.  We looked at the weather to see how many layers we would need to wear under our jackets.  The temperature at the bottom  of the mountain was -4 degrees and they were reporting that with windchill it felt closer to -20 degrees.  My Mom and Laura decided it was too cold for them ski, so they stayed back at the place and did some laundry and relaxing.  My Dad, Brian, and myself bundled up and caught the 8:12 bus over to Vail in hopes of slashing some first tracks.  We decided to hop on the lift at Cascade Village to bypass the gondola and potentially snake some pow, to our surprise the second lift we needed to take was not running.  They said due to the extremely cold weather the chairs were not evenly spaced.  So our plans to beat the crowds failed because we ended up being funneled down to the gondola anyway.  Brian was having some difficulty snowboarding because his board was not equipped with the proper cold-temp wax and was sticking to the snow.  By the time we got to the bottom of the backside, Brian was extremely frustrated and called it a day heading in at 10.  The Oriental Express Lift was having the same problem as the Pride Express and was closed as well due to the cold weather.  Rest of the day after the jump...

New Year's Eve in Vail

After Brian left us, my Dad and I headed over the Blue Sky Basin.  We saw a lot of powder over to the right side of the mountain when riding up the chair lift.  My Dad was having some trouble in the powder at first, but quickly blamed it on his loose boots.  I gave him some little tips, he tightened his boots, and he was slashing powder almost as good as me by the end of our second run.  I tried to take my camera out to take some pictures and videos, but my fingers turned blue within 20 seconds of fumbling with the camera...I think it was frozen.  The lift operators at Blue Sky were actually tallying the amount of people they sent off the mountain with frost bite.  The tally was at 8 people by 11:00.  We were getting pretty cold at this point, so we worked our way over to the Two Elk Lodge for some lunch and to warm up.  This is sort of what we looked like when walked into the lodge.  

Googles layered in a film of ice, neck gators frozen to our coats, toes and fingers numb, and snow in our helmets and boots.  Luckily, we sat next to the heater in the lodge, so we took off our jackets, neck gators, mittens, and googles and put them all on the heater to defrost.  I took my sandwich out of my coat pocket to find it frozen solid.  Putting it under the hand dryer didn't work to well, so we bought some soup instead to warm up our inside.  After warming up, we attempted a more couple of runs on the frontside in the afternoon before calling it a day.  On the last run of the day, I stopped about half-way down the mountain and waited for my Dad to ski down to me.  He hockey stopped right next to me and I looked at his face, only to see that the tip of his nose was white.  Immediately I told him to cover up his nose because I was worried that he might have frost bite.  We skied down to the bottom of the mountain and by that time his nose had regained color.  Overall, it was a great last day of skiing with my Dad in the sub-zero conditions and fresh powder.  

Day Stats

Mountain: Vail
Vertical Feet: 17,547
Lifts:11

Pins: No Returns (covering 200,00 vertical ft. on the season)

         Blue Skyrider (riding every lift on Blue Sky Basin)