We weren’t in any particular hurry to get going Saturday morning, we basically had the whole day to get to Keystone. A few places to stop on the way, but it is only about a 3 hour drive. So we got up and leisurely got packed and loaded to go. We were out of the house by a little before 10am. First stop was to drop Nala off at the PetsHotel. She was shaking almost the whole way there, but we watched her for a few minutes after dropping her off and she seemed to relax a lot once she could run around, and sniff everything of course.

We made another stop to get gas and pick up some snacks as we hadn’t had any breakfast. Then it was time to head north! Something happened getting onto I-70 in Denver, according to Brian we “fell off” the interstate. Must have been in the wrong lane at some point, but we continued on US-6 for quite a ways. Probably a little slower travelling but not out of the way and it was actually very scenic. Just before Idaho Springs we met up with the Interstate again. In Idaho Springs we stopped to rent skis from our favorite ski shop. It turned out they had moved, but just across the street. Stepping out of the car, something didn’t feel right. It actually took a little while to figure out what it was – it was too WARM! We were usually freezing our tails off at this point. Instead it felt only mildly cool, and kind of muggy. Definitely not the cool crispness we were used to feeling by this point in the trip. Not a good sign.

We got fitted for our skis and were on our way again before too long. We stopped again in Silverthorne for a potty and drink-refill break. It IS January right??? Why were we outside in short-sleeves? Definitely not a good sign. Back on the road, it started to rain. Yes, that’s right.. RAIN!!!It doesn’t rain here in the winter… at least not that I have seen! This was nuts. As we went farther into the mountains the rain slowly turned more “mushy” until it was something that could almost qualify as snow, but definitely not good skiing snow. Much too wet. Hopefully things were better up in the mountains. Keystone hadn’t gotten any snow in quite some time, and the conditions were listed as “packed powder” which is ski lingo for ice. Fortunately the snow did improve as we got closer, it looked like Keystone was going to get a fresh load of snow just in time!

Chapter 2. Slopeside is truly “Slopeside”!

We finally arrived in Keystone and found the Condo Registration building. We checked in, but our room in the Slopseside Condominiums wasn’t ready yet so they guy gave me a number to call later to check on when we could get in. We already had a key but didn’t know the room number yet. We drove on over to the Mountain House area where our condo building was located. We parked and walked in to the Mountain House base house. We hadn’t had lunch, and even though we had a late breakfast we were all a little hungry. So we got some pizza from the snack bar inside.

Someone came up to us while we were eating and wanted to do a survey, I’m not sure how useful our answers were since we had only been on the property less than an hour… oh well. After we ate I took out the cell phone to call and check on our room. It turned out I was out of minutes. And the only way to “top-up” from the phone is by knowing your secret pin number. Which of course I can never remember. Rats! What bad timing. My phone used to top-up automatically when the balance was low, but that feature hasn’t appeared to be working lately. So we wandered around looking for a phone we could use to call. We finally ended up in the Guest Services building, where a very nice man hooked me up with the registration people on the phone. The room wasn’t quite ready yet still, but the man told us where there was another House Phone in Mountain House so we went back over there to wait a bit more. (That knowledge would come in handy tomorrow…)

The next time I called the room was ready, or at least close enough that they were willing to give me the room number so we headed over to unload. I have to brag for a bit about our location – the Slopeside Condominiums are just that – slopeside! The building is IN the Mountain House Base Area. Talk about walking out your door and hopping on the lift… this was amazing! And our room even faced the slopes – what a view! We were on the first floor and our patio went right out to the ski area. Unfortunately we didn’t have a key to get in that way, but it might be easier to go out that way… or so we thought, HAHA! (i.e clue #1)

Coming in with our luggage, we didn’t notice in time that Lily hadn’t made it off the elevator with us… a few moments of slight panic ensued when we realized she was still on the elevator and it was already headed to another floor! Brian raced to find the stairs, I stayed put hoping she would stay on it until it came back. After a couple of minutes the doors opened again and she was still there. She had remembered which floor we were on and a maid on a higher floor had helped her get back. Whew. Heart rate could slow down now.

We got unpacked and I got the wireless internet working so I could top-up my phone from the website. Then decided to go to the ice skating rink for a while. We caught a bus just outside the building – it took a while to get over to the Lakeside are (where the rink is) but it was nice to see some more of the resort on the way.

Chapter 3. Racing around the Rink

We had gotten some skating passes with our room, but we still had to rent skates. We all chose the figure skates (instead of hockey skates) and headed out to skate. Almost immediately my skates were a problem – they felt like they were squeezing my feet so hard on the sides I could barely walk, much less skate. After a few attempts at going around the rink, I decided to go back in and trade them for the hockey skates. Those were MUCH more comfortable. After a loop around this time, I felt like I could skate all night! The Keystone skating rink is outside –a frozen lake actually. It is supposed to be the largest outdoor Zamboni maintained rink the in the country. A lot of it was covered with snow and not skate-able but it wasn’t very busy so there was plenty of room. It was, however, quite bumpy. Not the smoothest ice ever, but was still a lot of fun. Lily was doing better than most of the young kids there, thanks to her skating lessons. When we were almost ready to go, Brian and I decided to race. First we went on the path around the outside of the hockey rink. That didn’t go so well for me. It was so dark and bumpy back there that I kept wiping out! So we had a rematch around just the main part of the rink. This time, I managed an amazing come-from-behind victory in the final seconds! We were worn out though, and headed back to the bus stop.

It had gotten quite cold by now, with sun completely gone. We had to wait a few minutes for a bus. The first one that came wasn’t going to Mountain House, but told us we could transfer to one that would later. So we jumped on. The bus was going to River Run, we decided to get some dinner there instead of waiting for our bus. We didn’t walk far before finding Parrot Eyes Margaritas. We weren’t super hungry, so a place where we could just get a snack would be good. We order some nachos and drinks, and enjoyed the break in the beach-themed bar. Kind of odd at a ski resort… but still cool. It was starting to get late so after we ate we were ready to head back to the room. We decided to see how far it would be to walk back instead of waiting for a bus… so we walked. And walked. And walked. It was a bit farther than we had thought it would be. And most of the walk was along a dark road. But it was kind of neat too. Night skiing was ending as we got back to our building, making it really dark.

But we were finally ready to get settled in for the night, so we could be ready for a morning on the slopes. We got ready for bed, Lily and I read a bedtime story before snuggling in. At some point during all this (though I don’t really remember doing it) I made the unfortunate decision to lock the deadbolt on the main door. (betcha can’t guess what’s going to happen tomorrow…i.e.clue #2)

Chapter 4. A Morning of Problems
It hadn’t been the most restful night, but we were still ready to get going when the alarm went off. We didn’t get our full ski gear on yet, thinking we would run over to the Mountain House for a light breakfast then come back and get ready to ski. Having discovered the patio exit the day before, we went out that way…We had some cereal and fruit then headed back to the room.
Brian’s key didn’t work though! I thought something must have erased it so I pulled out mine. Same thing – the light just flashed yellow! Lily was supposed to be at ski school in 20 minutes – her skis, helmet, everything was in the room! What terrible timing for something to go wrong.

We knew we had seen one of those house phones in our building the day before, but in our panic we weren’t able to find it this time. My cell phone was working now, but I didn’t have the Guest Services number with me. We knew at least that there was a phone in Mountain House (good thing we had to use it yesterday) so Lily and I ran back over there. I lost track of Brian at this point. I was quickly connected to the Property Manager, and after explaining that our keys weren’t working and we needed in the room asap, she said she would meet me at the room.
She was already there when we got back. She pulled out her master key and was about to tell me where to go to get a new key, then realized that her key did the SAME thing! Still flashing yellow! Down to 15 minutes now. And total panic mode sets in. It wasn’t just the key, something must be wrong with our door! After trying it a few more times, she mentioned that a yellow light usually meant the deadbolt was locked, and asked if I was sure no one was in there.

The deadbolt. Of course. We had left through the patio door earlier! The realization suddenly set in that this was our fault, not a case of broken keys but a case of some morons locking themselves out. I was glad they were at least still willing to help us but no longer confident that they would be eager to take care of this so quickly. She couldn’t get in touch with Access Control, who had the right key to unlock the deadbolt. Or the key for the patio door. She suggested that I go ahead and take Lily over to Ski School and see if they could hook her up with some equipment since she was doubtful we were going to get in before she needed to be there.

So we went over and checked in. When I explained the situation they were very nice and comped her a set of skis and boots. When I got back to the room Brian was there with another guy, the property manager from earlier was gone. He didn’t have the right key either though, and left assuring us he would follow up and make sure someone was coming. So then we waited. And waited. Feeling really stupid and really frustrated that we could be skiing, but were instead standing in the hall at the mercy of the Resort management. Finally a security guy arrived, and let us in with a quick swipe of his card. He was very nice, but pointed out in very clear terms that we had locked ourselves out. We deserved that, I guess. Lesson learned. No more deadbolt, and no more going out the patio. Just to be safe.

We hadn’t lost all that much time, and quickly got ready to head to the lifts. I ran Lily’s skis over but they had already fitted her in other ones so we just left it that way. Unfortunately we also realized during all this that one of the ski locker keys had disappeared. There was an extra one so we weren’t locked out from our skis. But knowing we would be responsible for it, we wasted several more minutes looking for it, to no avail. Then to top it off, the lift I had been planning to start out on was closed! Could anything go right this morning???

Chapter 5. Getting my “Ski-legs” back

We jumped on the Peru Express lift instead. It was a big four person lift – the main reason I didn’t want to start out on it. I hate being crowded getting off the lift – I must have been traumatized learning to ski at Monarch (they have the WORST lifts for beginners) because the whole getting off the lift thing instills a very certain sense of fear in me. Everytime. I was also feeling rather nervous about the trails – Brian pointed out that it was because I had never been here before and didn’t have that same sense of security that I could get down on a trail I knew.

We got to the top and unloaded with no major disasters. That increased my confidence a lot – good to have that first unload successfully behind me! Schoolmarm is the long green slope at Keystone, and Brian (who had been here once before) assured me it was easy enough so we headed that way. The first few minutes were still a little nerve-wracking while I got my ski-legs back. And tried to keep my speed under control enough that I could stop with no trouble. That didn’t always happen, but gradually I began to relax a little as we worked our way down the mountain. The bottom part of Schoolmarm was the most fun – it is a narrow catwalk type area, just downhill enough that you keep moving with no trouble, but gentle enough that I could just point my skis downhill and not have to worry about getting out of control. I am glad at least that I have gotten comfortable enough with traversing and “zig-zagging” that I only have to use the “snowplow” for dire emergencies.

We got back to the bottom, with me feeling much better and starting to enjoy myself for the first time. We took the same lift up, with Brian convincing me to ski down the same slope, but partway down jump on another lift which would take us to the top of the mountain. Schoolmarm starts at the top, so this way we could ski the whole trail. Again the lift ride and unload went off smoothly, except that Brian didn’t bother to wait for me as we got to the front of the lift line and so I ended up going by myself! The snow was really starting to come down, and the slopes were getting much more powdery. Brian commented that it was like skiing through butter. Definitely better than ice!

We skied partway down the mountain to the Montezuma Lift and took it all the way to the top. From here we split up – Brian wanted to do some of the more challenging Blue slopes, I was planning to take Schoolmarm all the way down. I was also anxious to head off to the Ski School area and see Lily. I had originally wanted to go on a snow-shoe tour that day, but didn’t because I would have been gone all day and not gotten to see Lily at all. So we agreed to meet there after taking our separate paths down. The top half of Schoolmarm was pretty much the same as what I had already skied – gave my legs a work-out in a few places but nothing I couldn’t handle. It was still snowing so there was always a fresh layer of powder. It was also a bit crowded though – the lift lines weren’t long, but just steady enough to keep the mountain fairly full. So I often had to carefully work my way around other skiers to avoid collisions. I made pretty good time going down though, and was definitely getting my confidence back.

Chapter 6. To River Run and Back Again…

I walked over to the kid’s ski area and looked around for Lily. I was looking for several minutes when Brian called to me – he had beaten me there and had already spotted Lily going up one of the Magic Carpet lifts. It looked like there was only 1 other kid in her class – she was getting an almost private lesson! She was doing very well. She had gotten the hang of the “snowplow” (or the “pizza” as they call it for the kids) and seemed to have pretty good control. We watched for a few minutes – saying Hi to her one time when she came back to load the carpet. She didn’t really respond to us, later she said she hadn’t seen us. I guess we looked different in all of our ski gear!

After watching for a little bit, we decided to head over to River Run for lunch. The easiest way was to ski back down from the top and take one of the trails that went over there. We knew from walking last night that it was a long way from base to base! So we did basically the same thing as last time – up the Peru express, skied down to the Montezuma lift, took it to the top, then skied down Schoolmarm again. But this time I took the “Ina’s Way” trail near the bottom that headed over to River Run. It was more of the downhill catwalk style that I liked so well, and even went over a bridge! Brian met me at the bottom and we went in search of lunch.

We pretty quickly found Kickaroo’s Tavern –the menu looked good so we headed inside. I didn’t used to like eating at sit-down places while skiing and would always just go to the quick-service cafeteria. I have come to enjoy more aspects of vacation though, and trying out new restaurants is one of them. Not to mention the chance to sit down and be waited on for a little while! Brian got some wings, and I got a sandwich. Brian had quite a few leftovers and would have liked to have saved them but we were skiing back so there wasn’t much way to make that happen. After lunch I wanted to take the gondola back up to the top. That was pretty neat – no worry about falling at the top of that one! You carry your skis on and ride up in an enclosed car. It was nice too since it had gotten rather windy and cool near the top.

From here we split up again, planning to meet at 3:30 when it was time to pick Lily up. I skied Schoolmarm a little bit more, making sure to end up back at Mountain House this time, then headed back over to the Ski School, wanting to see Lily again. Afterall, I had given up snow-shoeing to be able to watch her. First I stopped by the room to make some dinner reservations for tonight. I was able to get 7pm reservations easily at Bighorn Steakhouse – this isn’t Disney World afterall! Then I went for some hot chocolate in Mountain House, and took it with me over to Discovery area where I suspected Lily would still be.

I spotted her pretty quickly again, still going up the same Magic Carpet lift. I couldn’t believe how good she was doing! She ignored me the first few times through, finally she passed so close that she had to acknowledge me – and she just pointed to the lift and said she didn’t want to leave! No wonder she had been pretending not to see me, she thought I was there to pick up her up! I assured her that it wasn’t time yet and that I just wanted to watch her. So she was happy then and talked to me almost every time she came down from then on. I had left my skis over by the Peru Express lift, thinking I might go for another run later but I decided to stay and watch Lily for the rest of her lesson instead.

Finally the teacher took them back inside around 3:15. I followed her over to the door to the ski school, but figuring they weren’t quite done yet told her I would meet her in a few minutes. I saw the Picture People not far away and wondered if they had gotten a shot of Lily. Of course they had, and of course I had to buy it! Brian still wasn’t there, so after a few minutes I went on in to find Lily. She was finishing up her snack, and we got her things together. It turned out that the missing locker key had been in her helmet that morning… so she left it in her cubby for us. Brian got there a few minutes later. Her teacher gave me her report card – said she had done fantastic and was ready to move up to level 3 next time! She had even gone on the Discovery Chair lift one time! She was wanting to go again, but since we had ended up using the Ski School’s skis after our mishap that morning, we had to turn them back in before we left. I didn’t think there was time to go back for hers in the room before the lift closed at 4:00. But we promised to do plenty skiing tomorrow!

Chapter 7. The End of Very Long Day

Brian decided to go for a couple more runs (some of the mountain was open later for night skiing) and Lily and I headed back to the room. After getting out of our ski clothes we relaxed for a while and waited for Brian. Lily watched a couple of shows on the iPod, and I worked on writing some of this report J Did I mention already how nice it is to stay RIGHT at the base area??? We were getting spoiled for sure. We’ll probably have to do something cheaper next year though, so might as well enjoy this while we can. Brian came back after a little while and we started getting ready to go to dinner. We ended up driving instead of taking the bus because we weren’t sure it was going to run late enough to get us back after dinner – no use getting stuck there! We actually got there early, but they were able to seat us right away.

The restaurant was at the Keystone Lodge, where we had gone Ice Skating the night before. In fact, we were seated right by the windows overlooking the rink! It was an awesome place. A bit pricy, but for one night I thought we should do something nice. It was a great way to relax after the tiring day! And the food was excellent. Brian got a Prime Rib, and I got a Spinach “Pasta Purse”. Lily only ate about half of hers before falling asleep in her chair – poor kid was totally worn out!

Finally we finished and had to wake her up to leave. We had valet parked the car, and when we got back to the front there was no one there to go get it for us. So Brian went to a House Phone to call the number listed on the card they had given him. The phone was in the main lobby – it turned out the person who answered it was at the front desk just a few feet away! She waved at him while they talked on the phone…It was a rather awkward moment , and we laughed about it all the way back. Once back at the room it didn’t take long for us to get settled into bed. Lily collapsed onto her bed and didn’t move for the whole night, so far as I could tell.

Chapter 8. Discovery Lift – Again. And Again. And Again.

The alarm went off at 7am – we had no reason to get going particularly early but we were all wake anyway so we started getting up and ready for the day. Same routine as yesterday – go over and grab breakfast then come back and get ready to ski. No more locking ourselves out this time though! We went right over to Discovery because Lily was anxious to do the chair lift again. We had a lot of trouble getting her skis on, but finally we were ready to go. She rode up with Brian the first time – not too much trouble getting on but she crashed getting off. We got her back on her feet again with a little work – that would be her only chair-lift crash of the day though!

We spent the next couple of hours going up the chair lift and down the slope. She was getting quite good, though she did seem a bit more whiney and “drama prone” than she had been with her teacher the day before. She fell a few times, but we helped her up and she was always ready to go again. I took a few videos of her going down, and discovered this was much easier to do without poles. So I left my poles at the bottom for a while. Reminded me a bit of snowboarding, maybe I should take that up again sometime.

At one point I crashed, mostly because Brian was worried that I couldn’t see where I was going (I was looking at the camera) and shouted to me to look out. It startled me so much that I lost my balance and went down! Overall, though it was giving my ego a bit of a boost to be skiing on the bunny slope – almost everyone there was just learning and barely able to even stay on their feet for long. I practiced my traversing and tight-turning on the way down as I followed Lily. She got to be a little harder to keep up with the longer we were out there, but mostly that just meant she wasn’t really in control anymore!

Around 10:30 Brian left to go do some skiing on the mountain, Lily and I continued the up and down with no major problems. After about an hour we went over to Mountain house for a hot chocolate break, and on our way back we spotted Brian coming over to join us. We went together a few more times, then decided it was time for lunch.

Chapter 9. We’re all a little Worn Out

We went to the upstairs cafeteria in Mountain House, that’s about all Mountain House has to offer being the smallest of the base areas. It was pretty good though, and we were feeling a bit more refreshed after eating. I ran back to the room to get the sunscreen, it had been snowing earlier but now the sun was out and I didn’t want us to burn! After lunch Brian and Lily headed back to the Discovery lift, now it was my turn to head up the mountain. I did the same as yesterday – the Peru Express up and down Schoolmarm. I didn’t take the second lift to the top though – wasn’t feeling quite that ambitious today even though I did feel a lot more confident and relaxed on the slopes. It was a bit humbling to go over the Terrain Park on the lift – after being on the bunny slope all morning I was feeling pretty good – this reminded me of my place in the grand scheme of skiers though!

On the way down Schoolmarm I decided to take a video, just left it running around my neck. No idea how it will come out, but thought it was worth a shot to capture some of the experience. As I was coming up to my favorite catwalk area, I had a wipe-out though! Not sure what happened, it was a bit icy and I probably just slipped at the wrong moment. I suppose the video captured it but I haven’t watched it yet…

I continued on down with no more problems and was planning on going back to Brian and Lily, but at the last minute as I was going by the lift decided to go for one more run. No more video though. About half-way down I was kind of wishing I had quit after the first – my legs were feeling a bit like wet noodles and it was harder to stay in control. I made it with no problems though and headed back to Discovery. Brian and Lily were about to get on the lift when I got there so I joined them. I had thought Brian might want to go ski more, but like me he was getting worn out so we all stayed at Discovery and did a bunch more runs with Lily. At last the lifts were going to close and we had reached our limit. Actually it turned out Lily was past her limit (even though she hadn’t wanted to leave) and getting back to the room proved to be quite a challenge. She laid in bed a while to calm down, then wanted to take a bath.

Brian decided to see if he could find a way to get over to River Run on the busses – the bar we had eaten at on the first night was having a Margarita tasting at 5:30. Lily played for a while in the bath, then wrote some letters to her friends. We had mentioned earlier how incredibly glad we were not to be driving home right now! What a fun but exhausting day!

After Brian got back, he went down to the hot tub for a while, I walked over to Mountain House to look for a snack. We were mostly eating leftovers in the room that we had collected in the last few days, but I was having a pretzel craving. Unfortunately, everything over there was closed. Being there when its not busy is great for actual skiing, not so great for apres-ski opportunities. The place was totally dead. So we came back and had some leftover pizza and pasta. Then collapsed into bed. Even though she should have been worn out, Lily was extremely hyper after getting into bed, and sang, yelled, bounced etc. for quite some time. Probably good that we were heading home the next day.

Chapter 10. Time to go home
We got up and set about the task of packing in the morning. We had decided to go ahead and check out before getting breakfast so that we could go into town for some real food. The muffins and cereal at Mountain House were losing their appeal. It took several loads to get it all down, but we were finally ready to go. We stopped at Village Inn in Silverthorne for breakfast – man it was cold! A fierce wind had kicked up and it was rather miserable outside. Same way in Idaho Springs, where we stopped to return the skis. A pretty stark contrast from the trip there a few days ago. My how quickly things can change! But at least this felt more normal.

Otherwise the trip home was pretty uneventful. We stopped to get Nala from the Petshotel, she got another pretty good report. Lily had swimming lessons at 4pm, so we had a few hours at home to relax first.

So overall it was a very successful trip. Once again we ended up not going tubing like we had originally planned. No one ever wants to quit skiing long enough! At least we did go ice skating the one night though. Our location was nice, but if we ever go back it would be nice to stay at River Run – there’s so much more there in terms of food. But the price was right on this one, and you couldn’t beat the view! We just hope Keystone is doing okay – the low crowds on a weekend suring peak season are a little cause for concern. With the bad economy right now, people may just be staying home. It would be a shame to see them go under. But hey – at least we’re doing our part, with as much money as we spent in just a few days… it was certainley a pricey trip.

Next year’s ski trip will have to be a little more economical for sure – maybe try Ski Copper. But next time we are up for a big trip, Keystone will definitely a consideration!