The year 2000 saw me heading to Steamboat Colorado for a ski vacation with my freinds Troy Hornung, Steve Ford and Wilbert Best.

We flew out of louisville and arrived in the am: at hayden international airport :-). This is a picture of the airport, big, no? I LOVE airports that you have to get on those staircases on wheels! (thats troy on the left, will on the far right, steve in the middle with the white hat) click on picture for larger size

After a brief trip on a bus, with a very freindly bus driver, we arrived at our ski-in, ski out lodge at the base of steamboat mountain resort!!! Quite a nice place, you can see the Base slopes from the room and you cans see the Slopes and Christie Lift from the private deck. Our room was the one on the left at the very top. That night after a brief homage to the snowshoe death march, we played modern naval battles and watched a warren miller movie until we all collapsed.

Our lodge was next to the slopes, with a great view of the frontside black diamonds ("see me", "voodoo" and "vogue"{a blue} from right to left) These three slopes were absolutely perfect for late day runs when your legs are tired but you dont want to go in yet. The Christie Lift (1030 vert feet) leads to the short "sitz" run which dumps you out on the top of those three and "bashor" (bashor is good bailout if your legs are REALLY tired) all three are steep, but very wide and quite well groomed. I loved those runs.

To go further than the christie lifts, you can get on the gondola(2200 vt feet) or the thunderhead lift(1640 vt feet) up to the thunderhead facility. from here there are a mess of really good runs such as heavenly daze(pic on left), rudis run, and my favorite vagabond. In the vagabond picture, the guy you see at the right edge is bitching at me for stopping there to take a picture. The vagabond run was a perfect run for me, 1600 vt feet, alternately real steep and paoli steep, and quite long.

On the second day there, steve and I went over the back of the mountain and took the only lift back up. We ended up at the tippy top of the ski area with signs everywhere that said "death awaits you all with nasty sharp pointy moguls". After steve and I reviewed the situation we decided to take some pictures so that the people that found our bodies would at least know what we used to look like. Thankfully we found another blue slope "overeasy" around the weather service building, from which the view was truely incredible. From there, it is about 3 miles and 3600 vert feet of skiing to the base lodge.

on the third day after skiing hard a couple of days at a real resort (I ran up something like 40,000 vert feet the day before, which would take 130 chairlift rides at my normal ski hill, paoli peaks, with its 300 vertical feet) we were tired and took a day off and went into town to see a movie(quite the view of the ski resort from town). except for poor Wilbert who was unable to move by this point.

the rest of the trip was lots of fun with little moments here and there. The room we were in had a loft, and the picture I took one day shows what a guy's ski trip is like for 4 outa shape computer geeks, kinda kills the mystery :-). The super peaceful view of the trees from the thunderhead lift. Taking a picture of steve taking a picture on the ENDLESS begginers slope from the top of thunderhead. Looking up the hill at the end of a run, and saying "My god, how long was that?" Then, all too soon, it was time to leave. The trip was a blast, I hope I get to do it again someday.