Powder Day at Vail.
My tele-skiing friends Chris and Renee hauled me around Blue Sky Basin at Vail on Monday and treated me to bowls full of fresh powder, trees and one small cliff. I stuck my landing off the cliff but a few yards after that, my board nosed under a rock and speared what appeared to be some dung. That’s right, poo. I suppose it could have been some mud, but it stuck to the base and nose of the board and when I scraped it off, it had a texture more akin to droppings than soil. I guess if we’re going to share the terrain with Elk, they’re going to share with us, too.
The only thing that makes Vail a little uncomfortable is the stank of the rich. The sidewalks are heated in the village to eliminate plowing and shoveling, parking is $17 for the day (but it is in a multilevel garage), my lunch (a bowl of chowder, cheeseburger and gatorade) cost $23 and many of the trail and peak names are trademarked. We didn’t have any fur coat sitings, but money was still in the air. At the Two Elk lodge (which sits at 11,200 feet), there were scented candles burning in the men’s room and the music pumped through the lodge was big band jazz, more akin to Benny Goodman and Ella Fitzgerald. It was a stunning timber and beam lodge, but walking through, I couldn’t help but feel like I wasn’t a member of Vail’s target demographic.
But, doing laps in Pete’s Bowl™ on my snowboard, I could not have felt more at home.