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!
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