Free Your Mountain

Every morning I wake up to the sun rising out my back window over Peak One. I can honestly say this is the reason I moved to Colorado. Breathing that crisp air and watching the sun slowly creep over the mountains as I walk to the bus stop each morning makes the six below windchill completely bearable. I've skied or rode 17 days in a row so far. Sometimes, my coworkers look at me like I'm crazy as I get into gear during my 10 minute break; just so I can get to the bus quicker and make the most of my hour long lunch break. This is why I live here.

I moved up here a few weeks ago and crashed at my friend Tripp and Carly's until I found a place. I was really hoping to find something in downtown Frisco (closest town to Copper Mountain and great place to hangout), but subleases get posted on Craigslist and are taken in about 2 hours. However, I got a lucky break and found a place just a few blocks from Main Street. Tripp found the number on his phone, I called the landlord, drove over there in a half an hour, Tripp happened to have $150 in his wallet to secure the place, and now I have a home. During that 30 minute drive down there, five people had called to try and secure the room - in fact, my friend Andrew from work was actually on the phone talking to him as I walked in the door. Sucks for him haha

I work at the Copper Call Center as a Vacation Sales Associate. Despite hating talking on the phone and not being able to stay still for more the five minutes, I love the job. My office is at the base of the Super Bee which accesses all the steep terrain at Copper Mountain, get ride breaks, the job pays well, I get commission, and don't do any "cold calling." Basically, people call me to book their vacation and my job is to tell them how awesome skiing and Copper Mountain is.

I've also decided to keep my part-time ski instructor job at Winter Park. I love that mountain too much and all the friends I've made over the past three years to let it go. I actually enjoy the job so much that I would do it for free.

Thanksgiving is by far my favorite holiday. It's basically stress free- cook food, watch football, eat food, watch football, catch up on life with your friends and family, eat more food. What could be better than that?? Well, riding for 5 hours while the Turkey is cooking in the oven was definitely an added perk to the holiday.

Wednesday night my friends Jonny, Lauren and Ryan came up from Denver to ride Thursday morning while the turkey baked in the oven. After tearing through the snow for a few hours, we went back home and my friends Goat, Erin, Tripp and Carly came over (everyone brought some wine and prepared a couple dishes) and had dinner together. I definitely felt grown-up for a good portion of since we were listening to Frank Sinatra as dinner was prepared. So we put on some Tupac and Biggie Smalls while we ate to make it better. All the food turned out great and we had a stellar time. Unfortunately, I ate so much food that I'm still in a food coma this morning.

Today is my first "official" day of work at Copper Mountain. After three weeks of learning the different systems to book lodging, flights, lift tickets, ski lessons, etc, I finally get to be on the phone and sell some stuff. So if anyone wants to come stay at Copper, I'll hook you up. My extension is 19951 hahaha

**Small side note**

Copper Mountain was sold last week to a new company called Powdr Corp. Definitely something that opened my eyes to the business world. Due to this, many supervisors at Copper have been fired. However, this doesn't have any immediate affect on my job or any of my coworkers. I do think that this is a good thing for Copper in the long-run. Intrawest (the old company who also owns Winter Park and Steamboat) is more of a real estate based company while Powdr Corp is a ski resort based company out of Park City, Utah. Thankfully, I don't lose any of my ski and ride benefits (e.g. free skiing at Winter Park, Steamboat, Telluride, Aspen, etc..). In fact, I received an email two days ago from the Town Hall Meeting stating that we might get the Powdr Corp benefits as well - which means I will be making a road trip to Park City this spring :)

Ups and Downs

Wow, it has been a very long time since my last update. In fact, I need to do some major reconstructions on this page, the color combination burns the eyes.

Alright, so I ton of stuff has obviously went down since I got back from China (I will eventually upload those onto my blog as well). I moved back to Denver in the middle of August with basically no job. All I had for a cash flow was my last pay check in August and the small salary that comes along with coaching soccer. However, my buddy Ryan (varsity soccer coach and Geography teacher at West) cut me a pretty sweet deal for living at his place until I found a job or moved into the mountains for the ski season.

The First "Down" - After repeatedly calling HR to see why I couldn't apply to any of the posted jobs in Denver Public school, I finally talked to someone competent. She informed me that I had be been blocked until my last paycheck was dispersed - sweet. So all the job searching I had been doing since June was pointless. I hate DPS.

The "Ups"

Soccer Team - We had a ton of guys come out for the team this year with much better attitudes. We even won and tied quite a few games this year! My buddy Jonny from college also helped out with the JV team this year which made this quite a bit easier and much more fun. The future of West High School's team looks very promising.

Riding - I hiked St. Mary's Alice Glacier four times this fall snowboarded back down. So I've skied or snowboarded in every month except July :) One of the hikes was actually during a huge storm - there were 60 mph winds! I had to basically use my snowboard as a shield whenever there were gusts. However, I did eventually make it to the top and get strapped onto my board.... only to stick to the snow. The wind was so intense that the snow collected a ton of degree and made it impossible to slide down. Needless to say, after about 20 yards of me hopping in my board, I eventually unstrapped and hiked back down.

Hiking - This fall I found a new love for hiking. My friend Devin drove out to Colorado with me and hiked St Mary's Alice and Peak 10 this past August. These hikes were pretty low key, but eventually gave me the motivation to get a 14er (14,000 ft mountain) in this season. So in early October, Jonny, New Ryan (he's the fifth Ryan I've met out here) and did a 6 mile hike to the top of Mt. Bierstadt. This is supposedly one of the easier 14ers to climb in Colorado, but not during a snow storm. Once we got to around 13,000ft there was about 10ft visibility, ice covered trails, and 40 mph wind gusts. I actually felt like I was in LOTR.

A few weeks later Jonny and I decided to hike the 4th of July Bowls (west of Boulder). This hike was way more intense than the 14er we did a few weeks earlier. It was about 2 miles longer and was covered with way more snow (it's very late in the season to be hiking). We got to the top of one of the peaks and could actually see Winter Park on the other side!

(Here's the view from the the saddle. We walked to the top left then got scared. This view is of Fraser Valley - Winter Park is to the far left around the cliff)

Once again, there were about 30-40 mph winds at the peak, but there was one major difference - there was 1000 ft drop on either side of the saddle. So we quickly took some pictures and headed back down to my jeep at the bottom. See below :)

(Lake Dorothy at the top)

(This is one side of the saddle)

Off Roading - I've also been hanging out with my buddy Tripp quite a bit since I got back. He's got a wrangler and lives up in Silverthorne, so we probably try and do a couple jeep trails about once a week. It's amazing the types of terrain you can climb in a vehicle.

Other Festivities:

Two weeks ago my buddy Carp from college got married. I was in the wedding and had a complete blast and a terrible hangover on Sunday morning. It was well worth it though to see all of my old friends from school and watch Tank chug a flower vase of beer...then throw it up 15 seconds later with the pressure of a fire hose. Check out the video below!

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.youtube.com%252Fwatch%253Fv%253DApLVALnvh-Y&h=55860c2b7e799f5b644d7ccb75b6e0e0

I also met a new friend named Kylee through my friend Ashley. She moved here in August from Virginia and is in that "new to Colorado state of mind" - which apparently hasn't left me yet :) So we'll be going on a hike/brew tour with her this Thursday.

Everything Else:

I've been working at Jamba Juice to get some extra cash (very little) in my pocket since September. I start my job as a Vacation Sales Specialist at Copper Mountain this Monday and am still looking for a place to live. Friday I'm flying out to San Francisco for the weekend (photo shoot). I had to redo my resume because I found out that ALL of the administrators at my old school have been giving me bad recommendations (don't want to get into that, I'll just get angry). I've been running and swimming quite a bit to get in shape for the ski season.

Last but not least:

Last week we experienced every season. We got over a foot in a half of snow in Denver. Check out the picture below. I thought that was pretty crazy until I drove up to Boulder to pick up Kylee and found about another foot had fallen up there.

SKI SEASON IS HERE!!