When I’m snowboarding, I love love love a huge powder day. Coming from Minnesota, I did not have a clue what a true powder day was like when I first moved to Colorado, but I tell ya, the first time I got to experience the kind of powder day where you cannot see the bottom half of your body while gliding silently through soft, fluffy snow, I was hooked. Those types of days I never think to ride with my camera because you tend to spend a lot of time digging yourself out of piles of powder, but this pic of a couple of my girlfriends on the slopes exemplifies my next type of day…

If it’s not going to be a true powder day on the mountain (which tend to be all too rare!), then a blue bird day would be my second choice. Luckily, where I live in Colorado, we have 300+ sunny days a year. Not partially sunny or sunny with a haze of marine layer or smog…we’re talking Colorado Blue Bird Skies – such a crystalline blue as you can’t even comprehend until you’ve been here. 

We’re so high in elevation here (7,000′ in my town, 8,000′ just outside of town, 10,000’+ where I ski 35 miles down the road) that we actually have less atmosphere separating us from that beautiful blue. Blue bird days tend to be “spring ski” days. Because we’re so close to the sun, its rays are SUPER intense, and what 35 and sunny feels like in the midwest (where I grew up) is nothing like what 35 and sunny can feel like in Colorado! I’ve come to have a true appreciation of being able to ride in nothing but snowpants and a long sleeved shirt. 🙂

The picture on the right is of the area I live in … my little town in the middle right of the photo on the valley floor – and the mountain range you see in the background is where I ski/snowboard. See why I came on vacation and never left?

Finally, if the skies choose to not be dumping snow or be shining a bright blue, there’s the third type of day. The people watching day. Last Saturday was like that!

We actually had a couple inches of fresh powder, but nothing to write home about, so for lunch we decided to stop at a new restaurant on the moutain that just opened this year. It’s a fancy schmancy wine & cheese kind of place and not the normal place I’d hang out on the mountain. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some wine & cheese, but I’m more of a chili & jager girl on the mountain! At any rate, the person I was riding with offered to buy lunch, and this is what we ended up with. A “flight” of wine for each of us (I couldn’t even begin to relay all of the information our waitress gave us about each glass – I just know I was supposed to drink them left to right!), and an assorted plate of nuts, breads, and cheeses that were also organized by “flights.” We spent our break hanging out on the patio, surrounded by toasty warm heat lamps, watching the crazy Texans ski by with their blinged out snowpants (seriously, who blings out snow pants?!).  Divine. After an hour of that, we were rejuvenated for a few more hours of blissfully carving down the mountain.

Life doesn’t get much better than this. 🙂