SKIING AGAIN

Well Telluride came up trumps in the end but it was a rocky start.

I had phoned in advance to the Information office inquiring about parking the Trek as I knew the town of Telluride is anti rv due to the lack of parking places. A very polite young lady gave us precise directions to the only park on the mountain capable of taking us, pity she was wrong. The place she directed us to was a double decker with low headroom and single places where we need 12 feet and a double. After managing to back out and get turned around we asked a police man. He was straight on the offense; where in Telluride were we staying, did we have a parking voucher, how many people were inside the RV etc. Eventually we convinced him that we were not intending to camp here and we did have a hotel room albeit not in Telluride so he directed us to this park in the middle of nowhere. The only problem was that this was an employees park so the shuttle had stopped running when we got there. There were no directions to the lifts or any information about which direction to walk. We started walking generally uphill and a fit young man with skis on his shoulder told us where to go to catch the Chondala. When we got there I had a problem finding long skis. The rental shops stopped at 178cm and I like 200cm, eventually I settled for 191cm GS skis very heavy [ bad ] very stiff [ good ] and very pricey [ bad ].

But two days later as I skied down on the last run with a big smile on my face all was forgotten if not forgiven. The sun was shining the snow was perfectly groomed and the skiing had been great.

Many of the black runs are short and through the trees which I do not like but some of the runs on the town side of the ridge were long, steep and free of moguls so I could let the skis run in big sweeping GS turns. Although it was spring break and the place was full of teenagers the ones on skis or boards were nearly all competent and slope aware so I was not too worried about being wiped out by some out of control lunatic.

But it was the new Prospect Bowl that really made the last afternoon a perfect couple of hours. Perfect snow when the rest of the mountain was starting to get soft and slushy in places. My MP3 player was up loud and the skis were running for me. I may even have let out a few “Yeah Haa” cries.

As all of the skiing is between 9,000 ft and 12,500ft this was a pretty good second stress test for my heart. I felt great.