Forget all this balmy, rainy, spring-like weather. I want snow. And lots of it. So since it wouldn't come to me, I went to it. As they say in one of my favourite movies: "Vermont is America's Snow Playground." And they weren't kidding about that.
I spent three awesome days skiing at Jay Peak Resort in Vermont. A guy I knew from university has been organizing this trip annually for about five years. It has ballooned to about 250 people, which made it ridiculously cheap. The cost included bus, accommodation in a condo, three full-day lift tickets, the party on Saturday night, taxes, and a tip for the bus driver. We left town Thursday at about midnight and got to the resort at 9am on Friday morning. I wasn't sure if I'd have the energy to ski for a whole day after not getting much sleep on the bus, but I managed somehow. This was my first time on an actual mountain, and holy crap, I loved it. I was able to stay on the green (read: easy) runs for the whole day and yet not get bored, because there were so many to choose from. My favourite was the glades. Skiing through the trees was awesome, although there was one run with a terrifying drop and then a sharp right turn which, if not executed properly, would allow you to become well acquainted with the forest.
The second day I was slightly braver and took the lift that brought me almost to the top of the peak and into the blue runs. The wind had been kind of bad the day before but they were fierce at the top. It didn't do anything for my confidence as I stared down the easiest blue that was dotted with icy patches. A few of my fellow novice skiiers and I slowly made our way down. We came out relatively unscathed. In the afternoon, we attempted a different blue on the other side of the mountain, where it turned out the wind was even stronger and the run was not just icy, but covered with icy moguls. This time I didn't quite make it down gracefully, but I was okay.
On the third day, we put on our best game faces and took the gondola all the way up to the top. Thankfully, there was absolutely no wind, and we took a fairly easy (but narrow and extremely close to the edge of a cliff) way back to the first blue run again. We were all really surprised at how much easier the blue seemed to be this time. After that, we just took it easy and swooshed down the green glades and easy hills until it was time to go home.
I was pretty proud of myself for getting through the weekend in one piece. Unfortunately, one of my friends was injured to the point that she needed to be taken to the hospital to get stitches for her forehead. This news came to us as we were packing up the bus to go home. We quickly grabbed her stuff and our bus took a detour to the hospital where we waited for her to be patched up. She was a little worn out but everything was fine. After a dinner stop somewhere in Quebec, we ended up arriving back in town at around 2:30am (more than two hours behind the other buses). The interesting (and rather amusing) turn of events came when we got to the border. I suppose the other buses had gone through the same checkpoint and told them there was another bus coming that had a girl with a head wound on it. We barely stopped at the gate when we were waved right through. At that moment, I wished I had bought more stuff at the duty free store.
So, I've covered most of the skiing bits but didn't really get to the social parts of the weekend. It's really hard to compress it all into a readable paragraph that doesn't ramble on and on, but the synopsis is: it was fun. My condo had seven other people in it, and combined with a neighbouring condo we were a party of fifteen. Our group shared the grocery bill and ate pretty well all weekend (steak dinner the first night, Chinese New Year dinner the second night). I got to meet a lot of new people, hang out with a fun crowd, and play with fire. The party on Saturday night had a '90s theme, and it was pretty crazy. Let's just say that I have to get back at the Butabi Brothers sometime in the near future. Damn, I have to get a hold of those photos...
"Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me no more"
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