Springtime – All the Time?

When skis are off so is my helmet! Always fun for us to work on the same days. 🙂

If you’re still not sure about global warming, you should have been in Steamboat this winter. As my husband and I were leaving the ‘Boat to join his family in San Antonio for Thanksgiving, we almost cried thinking about missing a potentially record opening day after a big dump. We love our ‘jobs’ (Webb is an instructor and I volunteer with Ski Patrol) on the mountain and rarely travel in the winter. But the day we opened brought radically warmer temperatures and then rain on top of that lovely two feet of powder.   The resulting crust was downright dangerous and virtually no one ventured off the groomed runs for weeks afterward.  Then unusually cold (20 below) temps took over in December, but we were hopeful as since got a bit more snow–without the rain. Webb and I made a spontaneous ski trip to Telluride

Telluride is fun to ski–and makes us appreciate Steamboat even more!

where much more pow predicted was predicted; then brought it back with us and enjoyed one fabulous powder day (2 feet on top of the mountain, 18 inches mid-mountain) and have had spring skiing for many weeks ever since.  Which is fun, if you can go up at 11/11:30 and ski for 2-3 hours–but wicked hard and slick in the mornings and total slush (potentially knee-ripping) the last hour of the day. But frankly, our guests (aka tourists) are nearly always happy as long as the sun is shining.  I hope that’s the case when they have to start shutting the mountain down, run by run and lift by lift, until we have to “gondi them up to mid-mountain” to the one remaining run, aka the ribbon of death.

I’ve seen it before; this year, I think we might escape to the beach before that bitter end. What will summertime heat do to our gardening game? With a 76-day growing season here, I’ve always felt fortunate to establish our little strip of vegetables and herbs in between two concrete driveways–we shall see if that continues to be a blessing. Grow your food when you can, frequent the Farmer’s Market and support local growers and ranchers. And limit that sun.