Winter Park - my Perspective

On Feb. 3, 2007 the GM Ski Club sent a number of representatives of the Midwest small-hill ski idiom on a foray of conquest to the windswept, avalanche prone, 3,000+ footed verticals of Colorado. Vini, vidi, vici. Even with a variety of skiing ability levels and some aches and pains, after about the third day, Winter Park "was ours" and we were saying "where can we go next that we haven't already been". Everybody had probably done all of the good runs, including some of the blue-black and black runs (as long as they didn't have moguls on them). Elena Bankowski, Brian DeLeo and I even found some tracked powder on Friday.

While back in Michigan the temperatures were frigid, we were fortunate to have six mild skiing days with bright sun and blue skies on the middle four. Macho skier Bob Krieg just wore a T-shirt under his ski jacket. Each day, whoever was skiing met at one of the on-mountain restaurants around noon and we skied as a sizeable group in the afternoon, usually with Les Skrzycki or Darrell Ahlberg leading the pack. In spite of our differing skiing levels, everybody kept up quite well and we did very little waiting around. And with all the express lifts that Winter Park had we tallied up quite a few runs each day. Les, Gary Barden and Don Jasper had to cope with some boot problems. Gary and Don had to get some professional help from boot fitters to gain some relief. Unfortunately, we did have one ski casualty. John Skeel broke an arm on Tuesday and went home early. Details are sketchy as he was skiing alone. We believe he was jumping off cornices of the double black diamond South Headwall and landed on a snowboarder, thereby coming to an abrupt stop and doing a face plant.

We had a bunch of nice people on the trip. Bob Dennis even paid for dinner for five of us one evening. But then - what could be the reason that militarily disciplined Gary Barden was "encouraged" to leave the Mountain Rose Café and why did that ski patrol guy come shouting and gesturing at Brian and me for skiing blue-black Cheshire Cat the way it was meant to be skied? Oh well, I guess Winter Park has its share of eccentrics too.

The town of Winter Park, though small and bereft of any wild nightlife, did have a broad selection of restaurants from Arby's to Japanese to Swiss and of course, Mexican. Nobody had to eat at the same place twice and we could indulge in libations rather carefree-ly since we had Dr. Rod Sharp, a pharmacist, to recommend a cure the morning after. Most of us though, ate our breakfasts in our condos and the rumor is that Elena is one smokin' breakfast chef and judging by the collection of beer cans that covered most of the TV console in Les', Darrell's and Rod's condo, they were on a liquid diet.

Finally, it is worth mentioning that all our transportation arrangements were on time, trouble free, no lost luggage and with a pair of very accommodating bus drivers who stopped and waited patiently both going and returning while we ate and shopped in some suburban Denver shopping centers so we would not have to pay resort or airport prices for our food. All trips should run this smoothly! Join us next year when we look for another mountain to conquer - and give us some input as to where you would like to go.

Thank you to all who were on the trip for being so accommodating, punctual and fun to be with and especially to Les Skrzycki for his advice and assistance.