An engagement!!

Hey everyone,
Apologies for not updating the blog for the past week - a combination of hectic schedules plus extreme laziness :-)

A few things have happened since I last wrote. Our friends Claire and Rob (who are staying with us right now) got engaged last week! Josie and I even got to play a minor role in the whole process :-) The night before Rob asked us if we could run down to the liquor store to buy a small bottle of champagne. It was 10:45pm and the stores closed at 11:00pm so we had to do the mad dash before the shops closed. As we rushed out the door Claire saw us and we had to make a lame excuse as to why we were going for a drive at 10:45pm! Thankfully she believed our excuse plus we managed to get champagne with 2 minutes to spare :-)

The next day, we all caught the Imperial Express (highest chairlift in North America) chairlift and whilst Claire and Rob rode back down, Josie and I hiked from the chairlift to the very top of Peak 8 (12,998 feet) to chill the champagne in the snow. Rob managed to convince Claire to hike to the Peak and as they reached the top we secretly signalled to Rob where we hid the champagne and glasses before we rode down and leave Rob to pop the big question! It was all rather exciting to have helped contribute and even better that Claire said yes :-)
The view at 12,998 feet is pretty breathtaking. I don't have any picture of the Rob popping the question to Claire, but here are a few pictures of Josie and I just before we took off back down the hill.........as you can see it's a pretty good place to propose.....



We have had a couple of huge powder days at Keystone, Breckenridge and Vail recently but I guess it wasn't was exciting as the engagement news (although a couple of 9 inch days comes close)! The weather has certainly warmed up of late. During the day, the temperature actually gets above freezing - something Josie and I aren't used to but rather appreciate!

Oh couple of funny photos below:

Obviously this is how Josie and I met ;-) Not really but we thought it was a good laugh!













Just posing for the sign.......or is the sign really telling the truth? :)










Hope everyone is well!
CLS & JS

More visitors...

Hey everyone,
Well after a few days of it being just Josie and I, we have some more visitors - our friends Claire and Rob from Oz - they are here for 2 weeks, so hopefully the snow will start falling soon :-) We have only had an inch or 2 fall in the past 3 days so they are still yet to get their powder fix. In the meantime Josie and I have managed to accompany them on a few spending sprees - namely more snowboarding gloves and goggles for Claire - I don't know what it is about the USA, but whenever people visit here they go mental with the shopping! Give it a few days and I am sure Rob will buy something as well....

Although it hasn't snowed much of late, the weather during the day has been warm and no wind - as long you slap on the sunscreen, its a good day! :-) A few pics of the past few days below:


Josie is off to Indianapolis this weekend to see some friends there - I am told they have some amazing outlet shopping which is kind of scaring me! I just hope Josie has enough suitcase space for whatever she buys! If it dumps whilst she is away I reckon she will be spewing ;-)

Just for laughs here is a picture of me at Vail a few days ago - it snowed 5 inches that day so was lots of fun - however I thought it was funny to pose like this....


I am sure some people think I am a "tool" as well ;-)

hope everyone is having a great time!

CLS & JS

More powder and more jumps....

Hey everyone - Wow you know when you are getting old when it takes you over 24 hours to recover from a big night out. After Dave and Tanya's wedding we did just that - lets just say Sunday was a VERY slow day! No gym but plenty of watching TV :-)

Monday was a pretty similar situation to Monday - we didn't bother riding as it didn't snow overnight - yup nothing like being a snow snob is there? We ended up driving down to the outlets and buying up big on Pearl Izumi bike gear for our April Utah MTB trip - well I did :-) Josie managed to find shoes whilst I somehow got shoes plus literally everything else :-) Its great being a guy and walking into a place and finding everything within 10 minutes of going into the store! I think we will visit the Pearl Izumi store a bit earlier to give Josie a bit more time to browse.

Living in Breckenridge is so great - whilst we have access to Breckenridge snow area, we also have access to 4 other areas - so if it doesn't snow at Breck we can head elsewhere. On Tuesday, Breck "only" got 3 inches but we found Arapohoe Basin got hit with 6 - it doesn't take a genius to work out where we were driving to ;-)

A-Basin is more of a "locals" mountain so during the weekdays its even emptier then the Breckenridge and Vails of the world. We got there at about 11:00ish (slept in!) but we still managed to get fresh tracks! A few pics below of Josie carving it up!



The next day only had a couple of inches fall so after playing in the trees, we decided to hit the terrain park again. Hey we might as well make the most of the jumps! The sun actually decided to make an appearance so it was another camera moment.....an arty photo whereby you can see Josie in my lens reflection! :-)


One of Warren Miller's saying is "you can't hurt yourself in the air" - thats true, however when you land awkwardly, thats another thing! A bit of snow on the back of my head hows where I fell backwards....Let's just say the helmet has paid itself back with interest!



Am suffering from a bit of a sore neck but it should be ok in the next day or 2! It snowed today so I have to be up early tomorrow for fresh tracks!

hope you are well,
CLS & JS!

Breck wedding of the year!

Hey guys - sorry its been a while since I wrote on the blog - the past week has been absolutely manic! Our friends Dave and Tanya had their wedding on Saturday so the few days before that was spent meeting all the other guests, riding with them around Breck, rehearsal dinners, etc - and that was even before the wedding!

The few days before the wedding was basically more and more snow - on the Thursday night we actually got hit with 11 inches courtesy of a huge snowstorm - whilst that was great for snowboarding (and I assure you it was great!), it also made it impossible for some of the wedding guests to get to Breckenridge as they closed all the freeways! Fortunately the sun came out on Friday afternoon which cleared the roads and allowed all the guests to make it on time for the Saturday ceremony.

A few happy snaps below:


Josie and I had a fabulous time at the wedding - we only knew a handful of guests, however everyone was super friendly and the drinks flowed very nicely - Josie seemed to rather enjoy the champagne and margaritas thank you very much :-) Certainly the funniest incident of the night was when the groom and his groomsman took off their shirts and wore only their waistcoats and ties - I think its fair to say alcohol played a huge role in that ;-) They came out either looking like Manpower or the Village People - I will let you decide which...




We are planning on leaving Breck at the end of the March for a 1 month tour around the USA. Since we have been here we hae missed out Mountain Biking so we have actually booked ourselves into a 6 days mountain bike tour around Moab, Utah in April - although we haven't ridden in a few months hopefully our current fitness regime will keep us going otherwise it will be a loooooooong 6 days!

Well given that its time we start looking for bike gear now .... retail therapy awaits!

CLS & JS

Board Gouge and Terrain Park Fun!

Hey everyone,
Well after a few days of rest we woke up yesterday to another 8 inches of fresh snow - We have been pretty lucky with snow of late - Looking back on the snow reports (yes the statistic nerd in me records all snowfalls reported!) we had in the vicinity of 80 inches (2 metres) of snow fall in January. Hopefully this will continue!

I managed to drag Josie out of bed (gotta love those sleep-ins!) and after some initial "I'm cold!" excuses we got out of the house with plenty of time to get first lifts. A few shots below from the Peak 7 Bowl - as you can see there is plenty fo fresh snow!


Despite all that fresh snow I somehow managed to rip the bottom of my board rather nicely after running over one of those "hidden obstacles" I am supposed to "look out for" - I didn't realise the damage it had done until I looked at my board at the end of the day. As you can imagine, I wasn't all that impressed with what I saw. I spent a few hours that night doing some serious repairs.



It "only" snowed 2 inches last night so we elected to have something of a sleep in this morning :-)
When we arrived at about 10:30ish, it hs just started snowing pretty heavily. Although the visibility was average at best we did a few tree runs and were pleasantly suprised to find more fresh snow - seemed the heavy snowfalls were covering up the previous tracks - good for us!

Josie was also pretty keen to hit the terrain park - she had a few little jumps there yesterday and that was enough for her to attempt to "go bigger" :-) As long as she doesnt hurt herself! We both had a bit of fun getting some air as the pictures below show (pics are a bit grainy as they are video stills and the weather was pretty snowy!)




Tomorrow is Dave's bucks day (his wedding is this Saturday - finally a chance to dress up and actually style my hair!) so it looks like are off to Vail tomorrow - there is a snow storm advisory out so hopefully it will snow more and the winds will stay away!


Hope all is well!
CLS & JS

A few days off :-)

Hey everyone,
One of the best things about being on holidays is having full power to do what we feel like. Even though it has snowed a few inches over the past couple of days, we just decided to have a few days rest from the mountain and relax. Those who know me are probably wondering "What the hell is kort talking about!" - perhaps I am getting old, but we didn't want snowboarding to become chore. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE snowboarding, but I also want to make sure snowboarding is something I don't get sick of - and having a few days off has certainly renewed my hunger to ride more powder!

Our mate Sean left on Saturday, and he also kindly took a suitcase worth of stuff we had bought over but have not used (why did I bring so many t-shirts?!). Not sure how Josie managed to cram so much stuff into one suitcase, but Sean and I were very impressed - right down to the sitting on the suitcase just to zip it up! Thanksfully the zips didn't explode open and the suitcase made it safely back to Oz. A 25kg bag currently sits in Seans garage waiting for it owners to eventually turn up!

Since Sean left, we have taken it easy - gone to a movie (saw "Untraceable" - not recommended. Rather unexciting really - 2 stars only!), and hung out at Borders bookshop just reading some mags and drinking coffee (or in Josie's case hot chocolate and low fat muffin). It was actually rather nice to unwind and watch the day go by. Of course we still went to the gym to sweat it out and get closer to a cardiac arrest :). The forecast is for more snow tonight so its all systems go for some riding tomorrow!

hope all is well,
CLS & JS

Early start II + mega bruise!

Hey everyone,
Seems my mate Sean really lucked out for his week at Breck - Since he has been here it has snowed around 30 inches - perhaps he should come to Breck to more often! that has basically translated into some fantastic powder days - there has certainly been alot of "woohoos" whilst riding down the runs!

We managed to talk Sean into a 5:30am start this morning to do the morning hike up to Peak 9. It snowed overnight so fresh tracks were the order of the day again! A few pics of the hike courtesy of Seans camera.


Its certainly a good feeling riding down the mountain before first lifts knowing you are the only people on the mountain! Its also a time when you can absolutely go flat chat knowing you there is no human traffic about! Ahh solitude :-)

We rode for a few hours until Sean had a little accident with a tree - the general rule is to always "look at the gaps and never look at the trees" - if you look at the trees you tend to run into them! Sean looked at a tree for a split second and clipped one - he is ok but he has a cracker of a bruise as shown below:



Whilst noone wants to get injured, it was his last day of riding - hey if you are going to hurt yourself it might as well be the the last day :-)

Hope everyone is well!
CLS & JS