Utah Skiing

After Jaye and Kevin and us flew to Salt Lake City together, we met Kim and Rich at the airport and rented SUV's. We drove through the city stopping for lunch and a little shopping before heading to Park City to meet the parents. We got unpacked into our rental condo, which was a big 3 bedroom (with extra an extra futon and trundle bed). We headed to the bottom of the slopes to rent gear, but were trampled by a city outreach program that gets kids out on the slopes on weekends, so we headed to dinner instead. During a traditional Utah mexican food dinner, Keith was stricken by altitude sickness, but ran in search of Advil and Espressos and was soon recovered. We did finally get our gear rented, and crashed early in preperation for our first day of skiing. We started with the Park City ski area, where Jill and Jaye took a beginning lesson.

Jill on the right and Jaye on the left during their first lesson

Unfortunatley, Rich had a spectacular wipeout on the morning of the first day and was barely able to get down the hill. He was out the rest of the week with a likely ACL knee injury. And I didn't get a single picture of him on skis. The snow base was pretty low for this time of year and the weather was warm, making conditions at Park City a little slushy and icy, so we headed to Alta, a higher ski area for most of the trip. It did snow on us there, which mainly caused us to get soaking wet.

Taking a break at Alta to let our gear dry

The remaining 2 kid couples at Alata

Jill and Keith at Alta

Jill was gung ho for the first part of the trip and was usually the first person in the cars in the mornings and was pushing herself pretty hard on the slopes. At Alta she tried her first blue run and slowly made her way down the hill.

Jill at the summit of Alta

Jill took another lesson at Alta and was quickly on her way to showing the rest of us up.

Jill skiing forwards (and Keith skiing backwards doing the shot). lamost got ran over here...

One of the beautiful powder bowls at Alta that Keith and Kevin insisted on attempting as often as possible

Fresh snow and the lake behind our condo

More fresh snow at the condo

For our last days skiing, we stayed near Park City and went to Deer Valley, where you can often find TV and movie stars on the slopes or sitting in their hot tubs just off the ski runs.

The family (minus Keith and Rich) at Deer Valley

Action shot of dad with Jill, Kevin, Kim, Jaye and mom in the background

Waiting for the rest to come down the hill

Kim hamming it up for the camera

A fall nearly caught on film.

A panorama from Deer Valley

A panorama from the back summit at Deer Valley, looking over a nice black powder run.

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All in all, we had a great time, even though we (read : Keith) came back with some aching joints. After a whole week, we are enjoying a little rest, but have already started looking forward to a possible trip next year. Now we just need to do some diving in a tropical climate...