White Christmas 2010
I went up to Mt. High for night boarding on Christmas, which was also my first time for the season. I drove and took Ian, my brother, and my brother’s friend, Jake. The drive usually takes an hour and 15 minutes without traffic but from past experience, I have always encountered a bit of traffic so we left my house at around 3:00 pm. The streets were quiet with very little cars. It was a different story once we got on the freeway. There was a lot of traffic on the 210W for being 3:00 pm on Christmas. I guess everyone was driving to relatives’ and friends’ houses. Traffic improved as we headed further east. Cars lined both sides of the road leading up to the resort. The place was littered with families who wanted to take their kids out for a day of snow and sledding. In the end, we got there just a bit after 5:00 pm.
There were barely anyone there so there was basically no wait to get on the lifts. We went on the intermediate slope a few times to get warmed up and then moved onto the advanced runs.
It started to snow halfway into the night on the top of the mountain but it quickly picked up and encompassed the entire resort, which translated to fresh powder.
Here is Ian at the end of one of the last few runs. He was covered in snow after having fallen a few times.
The snow started coming down hard at the end of the night. We quickly made our way back to the car which was covered in snow. The ground was covered in a blanket of snow that was a couple inches thick. We tossed everything into the car and got on our way. The visibility was poor and we barely left the parking lot before the car started to slide. We pulled over and put on our tire chains. It took us two tries to get them on. I lost feelings in my fingers after we had finished putting them on. It was a good thing that we decided to put on our chains as we saw the aftermath of multiple car accidents on our way down the mountain. After we transitioned from snow to rain elevation, we pulled over once again and took off our chains. It was a straight drive home in the pouring rain from then on.