Up to 24.2.10

I have long been fascinated by the signs found on the slopes and elsewhere and I have included some that we see all the time. I love both the directness and the fanciful nature of them, even if they have a serious reason to be there and the consequences of ignoring them can be the instant, on the spot, removal of your ski pass by the Piste Marshalls.
These will pursue you down the mountain in order to enforce a fine or pass removal and woe betide you if you are caught a second time as they can ban you from the mountain altogether!
We have just lost a six and a seven grouping of guests, and received in two pairs so we are down to four which is a very nice number to be catering for after 13’s and 12’s. For the first time we had a group in the other half of the Lodge and it was a shame because we hardly saw them except at mealtimes and there was no interaction with the other guests. We seem to have had a lot of Scots and I find that it works out at 16 out of a total of 38 or 42% with another 4 Stewarts due next week.
One of our current guests is a keen quilter and has brought her work along with her for those long flights times. It is exquisitely done and represents hundred of hours of patient sewing. She went to a meeting of like-minded quilters in nearby Edwards, but was a bit apprehensive as they are fervent believers and she was worried in case they tried to convert her to their 7th day Pentecostal Quilters beliefs. Luckily she is made of stern stuff and returned unturned. She doesn’t ski and her husband informed us, when we enquired if we could curry favour with a curry flavour, that HP sauce was a bit on the hot side for her. She was a teacher, now retired, and had taught the two adult guests from the week before, in Callander. How small a world is that?
This is perhaps to time to outline an example of ‘My Most Embarrassing Moments – number 34’. The other day it had snowed and the guests had gone out to their car to brush off the snow. Sue had also gone out of the front door at the same time, wearing her customary black trousers and black coat. I opened the front door with a broom in hand with the intention of sweeping the snow from the path between the two halves of the Lodge. I was presented with a person in black bending over tying a shoe-lace with their backside towards me. I was unable to resist the opportunity and brushed the presented bum vigorously with my broom. The guest (male) stood up and turned round with a certain amount of surprise as I gulped and apologized profusely saying I had mistaken one backside for another (Sue’s). He took it in good part and laughed – fortunately ( I could see an assault charge gently fading into the background), and showed his many years training of identifying aircraft whilst in the RAF as he observed drily, ‘I expect the silhouette was the same from this angle’.
After the RAF he worked on commercial airlines and related a tale of a colleague called Geoff Gay who was flying free of charge as an employee and boarded the plane looking for his seat. It was occupied but there was another seat free (probably this guy’s proper seat) and he sat down in it. A little known fact is that whereas employees can travel free, they have to be prepared to be bounced if a paying passenger needs their seat and this was the case here. The steward approached the good-looking person in Geoff’s designated seat and said ‘Are you Gay, because if so you will have to leave the plane?’. Geoff saw what was happening and as the guy blushed red and said ’Well actually I am gay but I don’t see why I should leave the plane’, he stood up and said ‘ I am Gay so I‘ll leave the plane’. At which point there was a Spartacus moment when another, completely unconnected person stood up at the back of the plane and shouted ‘Well, I’m gay as well but they can’t throw all of us off!’
The bird table is now a local avicultural landmark and is flush with sparrows and pigeons adding to the numbers. They seem to queue up in the tree nearby then swoop down one at a time to pick up their titbit then fly off to eat it. I wonder if French birds would wait then all swoop at the same time? One of the guests from a few weeks ago told a tale of rude French lift-queue etiquette in which having been trodden on he had extracted revenge by leaning over and releasing the back binding from the ski of the offender! Excellent.
The snow has been snowing off and on for the last week and there is a covering of about a foot of fresh dry snow up on the mountains. With the sun shining, the guests have been coming back with glowing reports and noses. We have had a couple of days of absolutely beautiful skiing with the bits in between the trees refreshed and topped up.
We have had good news from home with my niece and Sue’s niece both giving birth to fine babies with all concerned recovering well. They are the first of the new generation on both sides of the family so there is much cooing and gooing over the airwaves and on facebook, with newly promoted grannies and granddads making lots of fuss - and why not?
We are heading over to Breckenridge tomorrow on our day off, to meet up with a neighbour and ex-schoolmate of mine from Whitbourne. He is there with a party of four so we will be able to be guided around the hills, which is always nice, with a meal in the evening, possibly with the hosts of that Chalet. They visited us a few weeks ago and there is a possibility that we will take over from them if they fly home before the end of the season. It would be a nice change as the Chalet is an enormous thing built in the style of Adams Family meets Walt Disney, with massive beams everywhere and set in woods of large pine trees. The kitchen does have two dish washing machines and two cookers which would make a nice change as we struggle here to find cooking space without using the next-door ovens when catering for over ten people.
The Owner of the two Chalets is cutting the cost of a holiday by throwing in a six-day ski pass which makes quite a difference as they go for $410 when on special offer from the Ski Pass Office. It would be good if it works and tempts people out here because it really is a wonderful ski area and worthy of its reputation.
Sue’s shoulder has been brought of the attention of a specialist who thinks it likely that the ligament has become detached from the muscle. Repairable if operated on within three months of the tear ie before the end of March, and an MRI scan is needed to establish what the exact situation is. As a side line, Sue had to have an X-ray of her head to establish whether a weld flash from many years ago had left a splinter of metal in the eye. The danger is that when under the enormous magnet of the MRI, any metal will be pulled straight out with potentially horrendous consequences as you can imagine. We are now in contact with the Medical Insurers to confirm that they will cough up, and hopefully up front, with the $1500 needed for the MRI Scan and any subsequent operation that can be done at Vail which apparently has a world-wide reputation for orthopaedic procedures of this nature.
Who knows what they will decide, it might be that Sue has to fly back to UK and have it done on NHS leaving me to supply a diet of bread and beans to the guests for the duration. I’ll call it the historic, authentic pioneer diet and save the budget a fortune.
We’re told that we’ve bought a lovely board bag to hold Guy’s new snowboard. That’s nice and we didn’t even have the pain of going shopping for it.

Up to 17.2.10

Our CP guest and his friend have been absolutely charming and we were sorry to see them go, we will certainly have to look them up when we get back. He was going back to a retirement party to be held in his honour after working at Corus for 47 years. His friend who had driven them around and arranged the trip, lessons etc., works in the laboratory testing new steel formulations. He said that it took 20 years to get a new steel fabricated, proved and tested which seems pretty long but there you go! He also said that Tony had saved Corus hundreds of thousands of pounds over the years by turning off the lights whenever he found them on after hours. He had been taken on on a trial basis for a month and was leaving after 47 years. After we had been talking of places to go in Colorado, he turned up with a guide to the National Monuments and Parks which had maps, walks, history and everything else about loads of interesting places to go to. How kind is that?
We are almost decided not to go touring to San Fransisco as there seems little point in traveling thousands of miles to see natural phenomena and cultural gems when there are loads on the doorstep. We will see if we can base ourselves here and tour out on three day loops.
They had just visited the water / road tunnel and it is about 12 feet tall and roughly circular and 7 ½ miles long! It carries water from a reservoir through the mountains to Leadville valley. Once the road from Aspen to the Reservoir has been blocked by snow in November, the maintenance guy’s only way out until it cleared in the spring, was to enter the tunnel and drive out to Leadville. Can you imagine entering the tunnel at one end and wondering if anyone has entered from the other end?
Our other visitors are building up numbers by the day and I estimate we are now feeding well over twenty visitors a day. That’s right; our bird feeder has really taken off and is established on the local bird population’s radar. We now have regular diners of Mountain Chickadees, Black-Capped Chickadees, a pair of Pine Grosbeak, a Nuthatch, two Common Red Poll, at least three Magpies, a Steller’s Jay, a Crow and a flurry of the ubiquitous House Sparrows. It is situated right outside the kitchen window so we can see them as they fly in and eat and they will now stay and eat as we are standing there watching. The nuthatch jams the seeds into a crack in the wooden platform before pecking it open, the Grosbeak uses its crossed bill to crush and open larger seeds, and the magpie just carries off the broken pieces of cold toast and other items to admire them later. As you walk up the road, there is generally no noise other than from traffic, until you get to our house where there is a constant chatter, twitter and call from the birds – great. Although the birdseed will have to go through the budget as Muesli.


Off to the slopes so, to be continued.

Some time later - A super day out on the slopes. We made our way over to Vail via the Café we spotted in Minturn last week and had the wonderful breakfast we were hoping for. Scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage and a bread that had dark rolls of rye through it rather like a Swiss roll. Together with a wonderful view, coffee and a hot cinnamon and pecan roll that was like a Danish Pastry. Delicious!
We also found out the route to Minturn from the back of the piste at Vail. This is interesting because it is an about 5 miles of off-piste trail that ends in Minturn from where a taxi could take you back to Avon.
We went on over to Vail and parked in the main car park which is a rare treat as it costs $25 a day. However it did mean minimum stumping in ski boots to the slopes which was the pay-off. We set off up the mountain with it snowing pretty hard which is double-edged as the snow is very welcome but while it is falling, the visibility is very poor and that means the possibility of going into moguls at speed is increased and as we have both had nasty experiences doing just that, we are naturally a little hesitant. Up to the top and thence to the top of the Back Bowls where we went a couple of weeks ago with some guests.
We set off down a light blue and paused as the visibility was really bad. Having decided to cut and run when we could, we carried on to the bottom when the snow lifted a bit and we decided to try another couple of runs.
We were glad we did as they were absolutely great with about a foot of fresh snow and as we dodged in and out of the trees it was clear why this is such a world-renowned ski area. Weaving between trees has its problems if you cut it too close and I managed to fall into a tree hole as I tried to go in front of a tree. It was about two feet deep and I fell into it without my skis breaking away. The irony is that I have been looking for a real tree hole, to examine the problem as described a couple of weeks ago in this blog when a lady instructor died in one. All I had to do was roll around so that my feet were downhill and then slide downhill and out. It took me about ten minutes and Sue had plenty of time to come over and start videoing the last few minutes of the floundering. I thought of the lady instructor and realized that if the hole had been only a couple of feet deeper, I would have had serious difficulty in getting out on my own.
We ventured into another of the bowls and the area in front of us and available to ski was enormous. We decided to go off down a ridge because we could see all the way to the valley and because we could always track out either left or right if it became intimidating. The scale of the slopes is just fantastic and really we could have gone in any direction we wanted. Down through fresh powder snow up to our knees and loving it and it didn’t even hurt when the inevitable slow falls happened (to me).
This was the longest day’s skiing we have attempted for ages, and a vital intake of Chocolate / Coffee was the next requirement before a gentle tree-dodging ski back down the mountain from the very top and back to the car and home. What a great day out!
We have been enjoying watching the American Olympics.
Just because it is set in Vancouver and there are one or two competitors from other minor countries doesn’t mean that there should be any air-time wasted on them. We have been thrilled by Shaun White (USA) snowboarder, Lindsay Vonn (USA) skier, Shani something (USA) speed-skater, and a whole lot of other American competitors, some of whom have medal potential, but far more importantly, perfect teeth and glossy hair. Vonn had a serious make-up malfunction during her tearful post gold-medal winning performance interview. Her mascara was spread evenly down her face along with her tears of joy and I’m sure she will be signed up by now by a make-up company who offer waterproof mascara so she can feature as the ‘before’ photo. Let no marketing opportunity go unexploited.
Sue has made an appointment to see a muscle specialist in Edwards and this evening we had a telephone call from the surgery to request a confirmation (that she would attend), and to remind her that she would need to arrive twenty minutes early to take a history, and to bring the all-important medical insurance card. Another example of superb customer relations and a fine example to us all.
Finally, I thought you might like to see the fruits of my labours breadwise. I call it Father's Pride.

Up to 10.2.10

When we were walking up to the hanging lake we saw several of the most striking birds I’ve ever seen. Bright blue, the size of a magpie, and wearing a cute little black crest on the top of their heads, and they were pretty well oblivious to our presence. Having Googled them (what did we do BG?), I find they are called Steller’s Jays and I present one for your delight.
While on the bird theme, I had a moment of inspiration. We have been putting out various crusts, dead pies, bread rolls etc for the birds, and we now have a resident magpie and two little birds that look like blue tits that have been in a too-hot wash and had all their colours rinsed out. The inspiration took the form of a 3 litre milk container, an empty tonic bottle, a sharp knife and half an hour’s careful carving of both, and the end of my forefinger. Once the blood stopped I was able to load the tonic bottle with a variety of bird–seed (or more accurately seed for birds), and we now have a weatherproof automatic seed dispenser. The word has gradually got around and we now have five of these tit look-alikes which I believe are actually called chickadees, a fellow that is the size of a robin but has a thrush’s flecked breast and an orange bib and cap, a couple of extra magpies and two crows. Job done!
Update on injuries: Sue’s shoulder is no better but is usable, my shoulder is slowly getting better but still hurts when I least expect it, and my leg muscle damage has reduced to a lump in the middle of the calf muscle with yellow bruising from ankle to knee. One curious effect has been that it seems that the released blood has dropped through the muscles and is sitting around my foot which is now purple. Very strange!
We have had two more lots of guests, two couples, so we are now feeding 14 including ourselves and feeling like we are definitely earning our crust.
One of them has been coming to Colorado for the last fifteen years so is a rich source of good places to visit when go touring. Apparently there are ancient Indian-built cliff dwellings, the box canyon where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid holed out, aqua tunnels that carry water through them from a reservoir that double as a roadway when the pass is closed in winter, the atomic retreat for the US Government which is a monster hole in the mountain and features in many a film. As well as stunning red canyons, oil shale deposits, Molybdemon, Gold, Silver and Lead mines, one of the most famous waterfall / ice climbs in the world at Bridal Veil Falls, and lots more natural phenomena that need to be seen - we will be spoilt for choice.
I suppose all these curiosities are the result of the way the Rockies have been formed. First the limestones were formed on the seafloor, then they were carved by the rivers as the Pacific Tectonic plate that subducted the North American Continental Plate and heaved it into the air, then they were injected with volcanic intrusions as the plates slipped and slid some more, then more alluvial rocks were added from river estuaries, then they were glaciated, then continued to be lifted to the current heights which are increasing each year as North America slides Westwards by 3 cm each year. Add enormous quantities of snow, subzero temperatures for four months of the year, spring snowmelt floods and it’s no wonder they look well-wrinkled and exhausted!
While we were walking up the trail to the Hanging Lake, we heard a deep wailing noise which turned out to be the Glenwood Springs to Denver Passenger train that goes once a day in each direction. It was blowing its horn and it was echoing all around the cliffs so it was very difficult to decide where it was coming from. It was enormously long and had the Amtrack silver double-decker passenger cars some of which had the viewing glass roof. When we had finished the walk we went to the Amtrack office to see if we could ride it to the coast. It seems we can and as an aside, the section between Glenwood and Denver is reputedly the most beautiful in the country so definitely worth trying. On our way back to Avon we drove alongside one of the goods trains that also use the line and seemed to go every couple of hours. It was running up the Glenwood Canyon at about 35 mph and had three engines pulling at the front, two in the middle and three more pushing from behind! It was about one mile long and we couldn’t count the trucks being lugged along.
Despite dire warnings, two of the guests had to report a blocked toilet. Out with ‘THE SNAKE’ which is a contraption that is wound down the toilet and rotated vigorously. After letting the guests have the first go I went up to see what was going on. We tried in pairs to wrestle the snake down the loo and failed time after time. After a while, we had to admit defeat so called in the blocked drain guy who turned up with a variety of tools similar in style to our snake and set to - and failed. Next phase was to lift up the toilet from off its exit pipe and tackle it from below. I had decided that this was all way above my pay-scale and was very glad to leave it to the expert who managed to finally clear the blockage although he didn’t endear himself to Sue by walking through the house in the same boots that he was standing in, in a flooded toilet floor, but the job was done.
We also had a team of Roof Icicle Boys come around and start to clear all the build-up of snow from the roof and knock off the icicles that have been growing during this warm spell. This meant the end of our ‘pet’ waterfall outside our bedroom window and I took a farewell photo before they hacked it all down. I was a bit worried by the apparent lack of Health and Safety as they stood their ladders in the deep snow on sloping roofs to get at the ice and snow on the higher roofs, and without any measures that I could see to stop them slipping away down the roof. Still, they all had the right number of arms and legs so I guess it was OK.
We had a day off and we were invited to join the guests for a meal at a franchise chain called ‘Outback’. It has lots of kangaroo burgers, Alice Spring rolls (actually I made that up but you get the picture). The food was superb and we all had a jolly time with the only fly in the ointment being that Sue arrived home minus one amber earring that I had given her about 30 years ago. Perhaps if I had given her the pair she would have taken more care of it!
The upshot was that the following morning we retraced our steps back to the restaurant and then home again and Hawkeye spotted it at the edge of the pavement. Much relief all round.
We had stopped off at Denny’s, which is one of a fast-food restaurant chain, on the advice of Bill the Builder who had called by to measure up a job. Apparently they have two advertising slots during the Superbowl that was last Sunday (which costs them over $2.2m), advertising the fact that they provide free breakfasts on the following Tuesday. It was packed as you might imagine and I was told that last year they served over 2 million free breakfasts Nationwide. There is the inevitable data-capture-competition-entry-form and also some coupons for reduced meals through the rest of the year but it must still be worthwhile for them to do it. The meal was OK, bacon, sausages, egg and pancakes with limitless coffee, but I don’t think we will try it again (it might be breakfast Jim, but not as we know it). The waiters had neat t-shirts on though.
Our Policeforce guests left us, although we weren’t sure if they would be back as Chicago airport was reputedly snowed out, so we are down to four guests temporarily, which makes a nice change.
One of the new guests has cerebral palsy and has been having skiing lessons which look wonderful on the video. The instructor leads, holding what looks like a hoolah hoop behind him, and our intrepid guest holds the other side with both hands and follows him down with his skis between those of the instructor. The instructor can alter this arrangement by going backwards (clever chap), so he is face to face with his charge, and give instructions while looking over his shoulder for hazards. It is typical that there is a very special rate for those with handicaps such as being blind or having other physical challenges, that includes the Instructor, skis, helmet and boot hire, ski pass for three days and all for about $270 which is a fraction of the cost for the normal skier, which can be $645 per day for a one on one lesson.

Up to 3.2.10

Well, the four lads left us and went back to Ipswich, and we had two days on our own before a couple and a five arrived on Saturday. The five are all policemen or ex-policemen with one fireman, so all public servants. They are really interesting to talk to and eliciting stories of worst banditry / murders is easy and rather prurient pleasure as it always reveals the worst aspects of public activities. One guy is a CSI officer (Crime Scene Inspector). His job is to examine the murder or crime scene and, working with the Detectives, advise them if he thinks there is anything to investigate with regards to third party involvement or if the death is an accident or a suicide. One story was of him attending a death in a flat and finding a body sitting in an armchair with a pet dog in attendance. The front of the body’s face was missing and had been licked down to the skull by the dog, in an attempt to awaken his owner, over a period of weeks. Very strange and moving. They are good fun and we went out skiing with them on one day to the bowls that are located at the back of the Main Vail slopes. When talking to Guy about these back bowls he informed me that they were considered the most awesome in the world by friends of his.
It has just occurred to me as I typed that, that with the slightest of typo slips we would be talking about awesome bowels, which would be a completely different topic although no less interesting.
They really are just like a pair of cupped hands or bowls with a chair lift up from the bottom but almost no clearly defined runs as the sides of the bowl are all a similar degree of slope, and running down through clumps of trees. Apparently the trees at the edge of the pistes are always less than 200 metres apart because that is the distance that the elk are happiest with, they don’t like wide open spaces.
We happened to see a bunch of perhaps 20 elk as we were traveling on the bus from the car park where we had parked to the bottom of the slopes about 1 mile away. They are about the size of a cow but rather more slender with a lugubrious air about them as the hang their heavy heads. There are probably comic elk(s?) but I don’t think they were present in this bunch.
It was a delight to be guided around the Back Bowls by our guests who had been to Vail for many years, and we whizzed about with 6 inches of fresh snow over the pack snow, an absolute delight. I managed to take a tumble and hurt the calf muscle in my right leg so I am limping about a bit, but managed to continue and we had a wonderful couple of hours before we needed to return to cook.
For those of my readers who are uninterested in some curious male physiological oddities, I suggest you skip the next paragraph.
The new guests are full of beans and one discussion centred around the effects of jetlag and the time difference between UK and Colorado, which is 7 hours. Rather like the effect of the change to British Summer time although less dramatic, one of the guys pointed out that one of the problems of the time difference is that he gets his morning stiffy at 2pm in the afternoon instead of 7.00am. Very droll!
The hot tub is now operational and greatly appreciated by all. We have a good soak during the day and it is great at easing tight muscles. Because the water has only been put in recently, it is pretty clean apart from the high chlorine count in the tap water. So long as people shower before getting in and don’t top it up while in it, we can hold off putting in the bromide / water clearer / chlorine etc etc . It was pointed out by one of our guests however, that with our current ratio of 2 women to 8 men perhaps the addition of bromine in the water would be a good idea!
We have had to start using the bigger pans as we have a fuller house, so the monster frying pan has had an airing. Only problem – no lid, so this is clearly a job for Super Fryingpan Lid Construction Boy (aka Peter). The result is shown above.
It turns out that several of our policemen guests are entirely self-taught with regard to skiing. This is pretty impressive because they get around the mountain in grand style. I think that you can tell when a self-taught skier is getting better, it’s when you need less alcohol at night to suppress the pain to go to sleep. Bob’s Bar is the recipient of their undivided attention après ski with the result that the cakes are not getting eaten when expected. We have taken to packing them up in a lunchbox for consumption during the day. I need to find a Fireman Sam transfer for the box. Sue was invited for a drink but declined on the strength of her helmet hair.
We had our day off today and after a lazy breakfast we set off to Edwards and the Thrifty Shop. I was looking for TV controls as we are short of three, and Sue has been looking for a pair of boots since we arrived, as her £80 running shoes are just not the right job. No TV controls but Sue managed a pair of green Rocket Dog boots for $15 – bargain of the century. It was just the job because we were headed for a walk which starts just off the Glenwood Canyon, and goes up to a Hanging Lake. I wasn’t sure if we were talking gibbets or a geographical feature. The canyon was just as stunning as we remembered it and the trail head was duly found and parked in and we set off up the creek to the Lake. The track wound up through trees in a valley called Dead Horse Gully. The track was formed of packed snow set at about 2 foot below the natural snow level, and while it was OK on the rare level bits, it became very tricky as we got higher and the track got steeper. Towards the top the track there was a very welcome rail on the precipice edge side without which it would have been nearly impossible to get up.
However up we got and the Hanging Lake turned out to be a magical spot formed by the valley floor collapsing behind a rim of harder rock. The water was absolutely crystal clear with fish swimming about and several strange blue birds with head crests sitting about it in trees. There were lots of beautiful icicles in a horseshoe shape where the water came over the lip and we spent some time admiring the situation. Just a little way up the valley and delivering the water that fell over the lip into the Lake via the icicles, was a place called Spouting Rock. You have to give it to the Americans when it comes to naming things as they see them, and this was no exception as it does exactly what it says on the tin, ie a rock face with a hole in from which spouted the water from the underground river that fed the system. As this fell it formed an enormous icicle pile with exquisite shapes and wavey bits that we could walk behind and admire from all angles. Lovely.
We started back down the track, using sticks I found to help with the slippery slope, and we got back to the car, motored on down the valley to Glenwood Springs and had a lightish meal in a steak bar, then turned to the Spa pool. This is fed from natural springs containing enough minerals to give you a damp nose and a bushy tail and arrives into the Olympic sized open-air urinal (that should read - pool), at 104 degrees F, which coincidentally is the ideal temperature for a hot tub.
We slipped into the water and just wallowed. The muscles were warmed through and we were able to move stiff shoulders and stiff calf muscles in ways that seemed luxurious and certainly eased them off.
It was getting dark being about 5.00pm, and the scene took on a surreal quality. Rather like a scene from a Victorian melodrama, there were orange sodium lights casting an eerie glow over the water, with a thick pea-souper fog because of the hot water rolling across what could have been old father Thanes, and there were even bodies floating by – wonderful. As it got darker they put on green underwater lights, which meant that any surface ripples or splashes were imbued with a quasi-phosphorescent green glow. We stayed until we started to wrinkle then left and drove home to a gin and tonic and a micro-waved curry. What a grand day out!