Powder Mountain, 2002

(I started this with the intention of writing only a short summary of the trip. As I wrote, however, it just got longer and longer and longer. Oh well. If you like, you can just skip to the bottom where the pictures are.)

Aaron, Kate, Patty, Dave, Bob, Ryan, Kelly, Preston, Judy, and myself spent 3 days skiing and snowboarding at Powder Mountain, Utah. Aaron and Kate actually drove there from San Jose and were able to get in 4 days. They stayed at Aaron's sister's house in Ogden while the rest of us stayed in a condo (Columbine Inn) within a short walking distance from the lift.

We arrived in Salt Lake City on Saturday, December 29. The only rental cars we could get were a Blazer and a Suzuki Vitara. Bigger vehicles would have been preferred, but we actually fit in to these fine. Everyone was hungry and since we had no vegetarians to contend with (sorry Aaron!), we decided to get a hearty meal at Outback. The food was good and believe it or not, Preston actually finished his meal!

Dave drove the Vitara while I drove the Blazer. It was actually snowing pretty good in Salt Lake (you often couldn't make out the lanes in the road) so we were hopeful that it was also snowing up at Powder Mountain.

Of course, we made the mandatory stop at Fred Meyer's to pick up some breakfast, lunch and snack foods: chips & salsa for snacks and turkey sandwiches on rolls for lunch the next day.

Pulling into the condo parking lot, I decided to test the off-road capability of the Blazer and drove partly into a snow bank. Of course, we promptly got stuck. So much for the Blazer's off-road prowess. Had to pop it into 4 wheel drive to get out but that produced a nasty burning smell (Ryan thought it was the transmission fluid burning). Oh well, it's just a rental.

The condo was unit 3. We were thinking that it would be the same one we had last year but found out that last year we had unit 4. Unit 3 was a mirror image of unit 4. Nevertheless, it was nice although there were these bugs all over the place.

We met up with Aaron and Kate the next day. Unfortunately, Aaron had forgotten his boots so they had to drive back down where he met up with his dad halfway who brought him his boots. The snow that we had seen in Salt Lake never made it up to Powder Mountain. In fact, it hadn't snowed there in over a week. The snow, however, was surprisingly good and we were able to find plenty of powder along Lightning Ridge and Powder Country.

Dinner that night was at Chili's where we ended up with the same exact waitress that we had at Outback the night before. Bizarre coincidence! We stopped at Fred Meyer's afterwards for more snacks and lunch food and more importantly, to get a toothbrush for Judy! We got back to the condo where I gave the Blazer a chance to redeem itself. No luck as we got stuck again and had to go into 4WD to get out which brought about the nasty smell again. Oh well. That night, we watched Jackie Chan's Project A2, courtesy of Kelly. Horrible acting and storyline but great action and fight sequences. Typical Jackie Chan.

The next day, we decided to explore the west side of the mountain. To get there, we had to go up a T-pole-type lift. We found some awesome terrain with nice, fluffy powder through well-spaced trees.

That night was New Year's eve and we stayed in for dinner. Dave cooked up his famous pasta. Since Aaron wasn't present, we danced around breaking the pasta and then eating it without spoons. We made a tad too much and because the pot was filled with too much pasta, we actually ended up burning it. We ended up with a batch of mushy pasta, a batch of slightly burnt pasta, and a batch of mushy, burnt pasta. Nevertheless, it was good, especially the sauce. Patty and Judy forced Ryan to eat "non-wuss" portions. Ryan did admirably well, but we could tell that he was about to explode when he started eating at a rate of one noodle (broken no less) every 5 minutes. Judy and Patty decided to bestow some compassion and let Ryan off the hook.

We played a word game that night that was a lot of fun. Everyone will remember the Bobert factor. Statutory? Hemoglobin? Aneurism? We poured Apple cider and cheered the new year at 10 PM Utah time. Our neighbors, a bunch of kids, heard our cheers and knocked asking if they could join our party, dude. Sorry party dudes, we're all about to go asleep soon. Actually, we all stayed up until midnight (first time in several years!) but went to sleep promptly after.

New Year's day was sunny, warm and gorgeous. It snowed maybe 2 inches that night. Not a lot, but being Powder Mountain, it was still a lot of fun. The light dusting made Powder Country even more fun. It was a bit more crowded, but Powder Mountain's crowded conditions just mean that you maybe have to wait a few minutes in a lift line, still exponentially better than any California resort. We heard that Powder Mountain is up for sale and that they are thinking about putting in 6 more lifts. Hopefully, the management won't change things because we like it the way it is! Or maybe after Kate and Dave vest, we can all pool our money together and buy it. =-)

After we were done, we went to the gift shop and some of us got some cool shirts. We checked to see if we could get back into our condo. The keys were still under the mat so we all grabbed our stuff and quickly changed into our street clothes. We gave Aaron and Kate all of our leftover food. They headed back to Aaron's sister's place while we headed to the airport after first stopping at the Bangkok Chef for some delicious Thai food.

Our plane was delayed somewhat because of fog. It wasn't too bad though and we were soon back in San Diego. As usual, Powder Mountain was loads of fun, but it was nice to get back home.

These pix are courtesy of Multimedia Bob's cool digital camera. See them all here.

Here's a cool panoramic shot stitched together from 3 pix from the main picture page.

And here's some stupid movie clips from the trip. Apparently Bobert had a tad too much space on his 256 MB CompactFlash card (especially the last 5 clips - what the heck are these Bob?!). =-)

Clip #1: Snacking before the flight from SD to SLC. Patty tries to hide from the spotlight.

Clip #2: Patty & Ryan in their acting debut and Bobert in his directing debut (my recommendation? keep your day jobs!). Also, Ryan gives a quick demonstration of some wicked martial art moves - you may need to play it back in slow-mo to see them clearly.

Clips #3, #4, #5, #6, #7: Hanging out before the flight back to SD. Mostly clips of Kelly trying to avoid having her face being captured on camera. Feel free to download these clips and send them all over the internet!