Shaking the Snowglobe

This was our final day in Colorado. I woke up, unpacked and repacked the car to fit in Nick’s skis and duffle bag, and said some goodbyes to Nick’s mom Katherine and lovely Frisco. My parents will be glad to hear that I was told, “Your mama raised you well”, and was given fairly high scores on the guest rubric. This was the Dulchin’s last year renting this house after a roughly twenty year tradition! I’m grateful they let me crash the party, though I was told having lots of friends over and a full house is all part of the ritual.

The skiing was beautiful again, barely a cloud in the sky and quite warm. We set off a little on the later side for a weekend and were directed to park in the Far East lot, quite a ways away from the main village area. However, Nick and I, agile as ever, spotted some tracks in the snow heading directly towards the Far East chairlift from the parking lot, which would allow us to skip the rigamarole of shuttle bussing to the main chairlift in the village. We bootpacked up and down the snow mound to find the chair practically empty besides us and a few other super smart/brave/courageous skiers that had a similar idea. Turning around to look at the hordes shuttling to the village where there would no doubt be massive lines, Nick uttered, “What are those sheeple thinking?”

After a few warm up laps on our private lift we linked up with Nick’s dad Mike, sister Madeline, and friend Annika for the rest of the late morning. We skied Mine Dump, OH NO, Too Much, and Hallelujah. We made one fatal mistake of winding up at the aforementioned main village lift, Super Bee, where we were welcomed by a massive line. Nick and I entered the “singles” line, where many other doubles were hoping the wait would be slightly shorter. Halfway through the slog Nick mentioned that we could probably get a coffee while we waited. I immediately clicked off my skis, ceremoniously asked the people behind us in line what their coffee order was, and bolted to the cafe for some espressos. I returned to the line with perfect timing and to a few welcoming giggles from our line-mates. We sipped our espressos like Jean Girard in Talladega Nights, oh so pleased with ourselves for life hacking our way through the mountain.

Unfortunately, I flew a little close to the sun on one of the last bump runs and slammed my shoulder/face into a hard packed mogul. I was really charging and going for it, up until the fall I felt like I was looking great! I am totally fine but I feel a bit of a bone bruise in my shoulder, which hopefully isn’t too stiff or sore tomorrow morning. I really loved Copper, it was probably my favorite new mountain that I visited on this trip. It’s possible that’s because Nick’s family knows the mountain super well and was showing me all around, which was not the case at Alta/Snowbird where Alex and I just did our best to navigate around. But regardless I really liked the excitement of everyone on the mountain, and the terrain was super fun. I hope I come back someday.

Nick and I said another round of goodbyes around noon to Mike/Madeleine/Annika. It was time to hit the road for our ~7 hour drive. We found a taqueria food truck and ordered some tasty burritos/nachos to fuel up for the ride. We also stopped at a cafe that tripled as a Danish furniture/overall cool thing store on the inside, and sauna/cold plunge facility on the outside. A few Argentinians that ate next to us at the taqueria waved us down while they walked by, “We both know all the spots!”.

Oat Milk lattes in hand, Nick and I drove off to the tunes of a Spotify playlist called “My Life is a Movie.” We checked in 7 hours later to our climbing gym/hotel in Salt Lake, and walked around the corner to grab some pizza.