Cold and Snowy

After dropping the kids off at school, I came home and checked on work. Things were light, not a lot of activity, and since I'm leaving town on Sun for 4 days, and things might get busy next weekend, I decided to play a little hooky and go snowboarding.

I threw stuff in the car, checked cameras from CDOT, and then took off. I had an easy drive, stopped for coffee and a burrito in Idaho Springs so I wouldn't need lunch, and got up to Loveland. Traffic was light, and it was clear until Georgetown, but once I got past that it was snowing. Flurries, but still it was coming down and it was a cloudy, overcast day. The picture is 10am this morning when I arrived

I suited up, grabbed a ticket and went up the slopes. Almost immediately I noticed an issue with my zipper. Tia had purchased these coats from Lands End, and they're very warm, work great, but we've had zipper issues. Mine separated at the bottom, so it looked like I'd buttoned a top button and left the rest undone. I  unzipped and redid it and it seemed OK, so I went down.

It was alternately windy and not so windy, but always snowing. I noticed right away that it was tough to see bumps and shadows on the slopes, and it was a little cold, but not that bad. I needed goggles to handle the wind and snow coming down, but it wasn't a bad day.

Actually it was fun, with lots of thick powder on the slopes. It reminded me a little of Steamboat and I kept getting little puffs of snow in my front boot since I found myself in 6-12" of powder quite often. I went up the South side, moved to Lift 2, then 4, cruising all around Loveland and having a good time.

Around 12:40 my feet were a touch cold, so I decided to grab some coffee. I took stuff off, walked into the restaurant, and tried to undo my zipper. It wouldn't come, and as I was looking for a table I kept tugging on it until ...

The zipper handle snapped off.

That was fun. I actually was standing in front of the coffee machine, looking at the handle in my hand and someone had to remind me to move so they could get coffee. I moved, waited for them to finish, decided I didn't want coffee, grabbed juice and sat down. I fussed with the zipper and got the two sides of my coat apart. I saw then that the zipped on the left had actually pulled away from the coat and unraveled a bit. I tried to see if I could rig it, but I couldn't.

So I drank my juice and thought about options. I'd had 9 runs so far, and it had been a good day. I decided to do another with my jacket open. I went up the south side, rode down, things went OK, so I went up again. This time I could feel the cold, I made the mistake of trying a "new" run for the day, and wound up in a good foot of powder. After a slip and a little slide, I decided to call it a day. I boarded to the parking lot, packed up, and got home.

Not a great day, but a good one and one more time on the slopes before Feb ends.